


Valentine & Vimes: You Can't Say 'Fuck' In A Terry Pratchett Novel

by Aleaiactaest, Slyjinks



Series: Valentine & Vimes [3]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Existential Weirdness, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, No changes to relationship status, Swearing, failed attempts at swearing, some horror elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26543341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aleaiactaest/pseuds/Aleaiactaest, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slyjinks/pseuds/Slyjinks
Summary: New world, new rules.For the Commonwealthers, getting used to life in the Discworld has taken a lot of mental adjustments. Technology isn't what it used to be, but magic is real. The world is flat, and mainframes can run off ant power. Even little things, like the directions on a map or the number of days in a week, are different. But when the setting tries to steal their swears, that proves to be a step too far, especially when Deacon has reason to suspect that the underlying cause is something... sinister.
Series: Valentine & Vimes [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1689076
Comments: 25
Kudos: 11





	1. The F-Bomb * The First Rule * Idiots Getting Off-Topic

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has a soundtrack/Youtube playlist available: [V&V: You Can’t Say Fuck](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLEELrwJ-FypBYywOM81WCHmM4rOjKam0) (Warning for swearing in the playlist. Lots of it.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story so far: last Sektober, a magical accident threw Sam Vimes into the role of the Sole Survivor in a simulation/game running on Hex. He believed what he was experiencing to be real, and his realness and belief brought a measure of realness to those characters he interacted with most. In the year-plus of in-game time, believing himself to be a widow, he fell in love with Nick Valentine. When he was brought home, the game characters who had been given realness were brought with him, and though the road was bumpy (involving a scorchbeast attack on Elm, an Ankh-Morpork branch of the Children of Atom being formed, and Vimes getting kidnapped by an elf), eventually Sam, Nick, and Sybil worked things out between them. In the end, the Vimes family grew a little larger, with them adopting the synth duplicate of Young Sam (now renamed Shaun) and Sam taking a husband in addition to his wife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [I’ve No More Fucks to Give](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-calvsGLRfs&list=PLLEELrwJ-FypBYywOM81WCHmM4rOjKam0&index=2&t=0s) by Thomas Benjamin Wild Esq and [Fuck This Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKNLqoZJ-ZM&list=PLLEELrwJ-FypBYywOM81WCHmM4rOjKam0&index=2) by Schäffer The Darklord. 
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic. Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_The F-Bomb * The First Rule * Idiots Getting Off-Topic_

Barely a day had passed since the wild business at the wedding, and Piper was hurriedly putting together a reaction feature, although, given that one of those involved in the wedding was a close friend, she’d had to bite her tongue fairly hard to avoid an unprofessional comment to certain reactionees, and perhaps once or twice tongue biting hadn’t been enough. Perhaps once or twice a “common man on the street” found themselves hurrying away from her sharp tongue, and even then she’d definitely have to make sure the inside of her lip was good and healed before any deep kisses with her girlfriend...

Piper was interrupted in her work when Deacon sauntered over to her desk and leaned against its corner. “Soooooo. Piper. You’re a reporter, right?”

She made an exasperated noise. “That would explain why my desk is in the Ankh-Morpork _Times_ building, wouldn’t it?” she snapped. “What are you even doing here? How’d you get past the front desk?”

Deacon waved the question away, as if it wasn’t worth answering. “So you’ve interviewed a lot of people, right?”

Piper sighed and rolled her eyes. “Why, yes, I have been doing my job, thanks for asking!”

“Good to hear!” Deacon replied cheerfully. “So with all those interviews, have you heard anyone say -” He paused and scowled for a moment, then he continued. “Has anyone dropped the f-bomb in front of you?”

Piper looked up at Deacon and smirked. “The ‘f-bomb’? Seriously?”

“Yes! Seriously!”

Piper rolled her eyes again, then stopped to think. “You know, not that you mention it, I don’t think I’ve heard it. I guess it’s just not a popular swear here?”

“Well, can _you_ say it?” Deacon prodded.

“I’m not going to say it!” Piper protested.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m at _work_ , and these people get worked up about weird stuff! They make a big deal if I even wear _pants_.”

“Especially since for them, ‘pants’ is what you wear _underneath_ ,” Deacon grinned. “Pretty sure you mean ‘trousers’.”

“You know what I mean,” Piper growled, then stood up. “Anyway, will you get _out_ of here? I’ve got work to do and you’re in the way!”

She started pushing him towards the door, but he lifted his hands. “All right, all right, I’m going!” and then he walked out, past several other desks of people who didn’t even bother looking up.

“He’s so _weird_ sometimes,” Piper grumbled to herself as she threw herself back into her chair and tried to recover her chain of thought.

* * *

Deacon put his hands in his pockets as he walked away from the _Times_ building and grunted as someone walked into him, looked around in confusion, and then continued on their way.

He had literally been made knowing that there were ways a person could be invisible without actually being invisible, and that there were certain classes of people that were more invisible than others. He had leveraged that fact before he was even a real person, and the truth of that fact became even more true in the real world. Beggars, servants, workers, some of the non-humans, outright supernatural beings, hell, sometimes even ordinary Watchmen walked the streets of Ankh-Morpork under a sort of cloak of invisibility. But somehow that effect had become even more pronounced for Deacon recently, even when he wasn’t trying. Piper had wondered how he had gotten back there, but the truth was, he had just walked back there, and nobody had noticed until he said something to Piper.

As he reached Cable Street, Deacon felt seen. He looked around, searching for who might have eyes on him, and wasn’t surprised to see it was one of his fellow invisibles, one he’d seen with increasing regularity over the last week. “— it,” he muttered to himself and changed directions.

Deacon leaned against a building and asked the other invisible, “So did you figure I just… wouldn’t notice you using my own trick on me?”

The sweeper smiled and stood his broom against the building. “I assure you, Mister Deacon, that is hardly ‘your’ trick. Cigarette?”

Deacon accepted the offer and took a drag, then exhaled smoke. “So do I lose by being the first one to say anything?”

“No, Mister Deacon,” the sweeper grinned. “You waited exactly long enough. Normally, of course, we'd play a longer ‘getting to know you’ game, but we don't have that luxury.” He took a puff of his own cigarette.

Deacon narrowed his eyes. That may not have been strictly his trick, but he knew his own words when he heard them. “All right, enough of the games, who the — are you?” Then he winced at what had come out of his mouth.

The sweeper’s grin became broader. “Ah. And now, Mister Deacon, you bring us to the crux of the problem.”

* * *

Deacon listened to what the sweeper had to say, asking questions when he needed to, and when the man had finished his explanations, Deacon lifted his hand to rub the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Y’know, pal, that might actually be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, and I’ve listened to both Tinker Tom and myself.”

“Possibly,” the sweeper agreed. “And yet.”

“So why tell me?”

“Because so far, Mister Deacon, you are the one who has noticed those things that need to be noticed, and you and your… friends are in a better position to understand what’s missing than those who’ve always been part of the world.”

“I sort of get that, you’re not going to miss something you never had, but there’s no way the others are going to believe me if I just tell them what you just told me,” protested Deacon. “I’ve got a bit of a reputation in that regards. Overblown, of course.”

“Of course,” agreed the sweeper. “But you are an intelligent man. Knowing what you do, can you not guide them to the right conclusions without telling them directly? Be their teacher, Mister Deacon.”

Deacon almost scowled at the sweeper, but this time, unlike earlier, he managed to keep his cool and that scowl stayed in the realm of ‘almost’. His gut told him to believe what the other had said, and Deacon made it a rule never to go against his gut1, but that same gut wasn’t particularly comfortable with how well this stranger knew him and his habits.

But he could also tell which issue was more urgent, and it wasn’t the sweeper’s oddities. “All right. Fine. I think I can manage that.”

1 Deacon’s First Rule is to never go against his gut. The sweeper has an entirely different Rule One, but they’re not incompatible in this case...

* * *

Valentine had finished with his shift, but Vimes was still at his meetings, so Nick was handling the task of checking up on the traps. He could tell from a distance that the snare trap near one of the dragon pens had been set off, and from the looks of things, whatever had done it was still wrapped in the nets and dangling above the heads of a group of curious swamp dragons. Usually, these cases were a student Assassin that had annoyed a teacher and been assigned to get a sight on Vimes. Technically, Valentine was still on the registers, and there were plenty of bigots who were annoyed with his existence, but usually they weren’t annoyed enough to pay his current commission price. Occasionally, it was Deacon in the traps instead.

Valentine approached cautiously, just in case this time the contents of the net weren’t a friend or a harmless Assassin. As he drew nearer, he heard a voice he had expected never to hear again – and one that, in a manner of speaking, he had never heard at all, at least not as a real person.

“Why, if it isn’t Detective Valentine. Mind helping a fellow down, Nick?”

Nick’s optics opened wide and he stared up at the nets. “Hancock?! What’re you doing here? _How_ are you here?”

“Ah, see, I was hoping you could help me with some of those answers,” John Hancock answered, grinning down at the synth. “Saw your name in the paper, something about you getting married? Congratulations on that, by the way. Wouldn’t have thought you had it in you. Anyway, once I knew you were in town, I figured I’d come by, say ‘hi’, and ask, oh, I don’t know, ‘What the hell is going on?!” His voice rose into a shout at the end, causing some of the dragons below to squeal in alarm and annoyance. In response, Hancock attempted to pull himself a little higher in the net. “Also, why’re you keeping explosive pets?”

“Those are Sybil’s,” Valentine explained as he walked over to the dragon feed box and pulled out a handful of feed, which he scattered on the ground of the pen. With the dragons distracted, he started to pull the net to the side. “They’re not as likely to explode if they get the right diet, but if you’ve been running into ferals…”

“Hah! So ghouls aren’t the only ones to get their reputations wrecked by ferals,” Hancock cheerfully observed as he stepped to the ground. He grinned down at the happily munching dragons. “But what happens when they get bigger? That last one I spotted caused a hell of a mess.”

“These are already fully grown,” Valentine gestured towards the dragons in the pen, confused. “They don’t get much bi- oh. Oh. You mean the scorchbeast!” That would explain how Hancock could even exist – he had been made real before the icono-game had shut down. “But that was months ago. You’ve been here the whole time? What have you been _doing_?”

Hancock shrugged. “Well, at first I assumed I was hallucinating and that this was one hell of a wild trip. I wanted to find what it was that would cause a trip like this, so of course I tried what I could to see if I could reproduce it. Eventually I figured out that no, this is definitely really happening, and once I was sure everything was real, I decided I needed to try it all _again_ since I was in a better position to appreciate what was going on.”

Valentine sighed and covered his face with his metal hand. “I really should have known better than to ask that, shouldn’t I?”

Hancock nodded. “Oh, probably. Gotta say, I’m pretty impressed with the selection of chems in this town. Some of the things they manage when they mix it with magic…”

“I would warn you that the magic ones sometimes have some unexpected side-effects,” Valentine began, and then he looked Hancock over, “but you’re not one to worry much about that, are you?”

“Never have been,” Hancock grinned, shaking his head. “But you know, as fun as this has been, it’s past time I found my way back to Goodneighbor. Which brings us back to why I’m here. Nick, how the – did we all just appear in this… this… magic fairytale land, or whatever it is?”

Hancock scowled for a moment, but Valentine missed it in his own sudden distraction. “Hey, can you watch it with invoking them? There’s been a few crossovers recently, and I’d like to avoid drawing their attention.”

Hancock looked at Nick blankly. “… Who? What?”

“He means avoid the f-word,” a Wizard’s Quarter accent interrupted. “Not the one you can’t say, just the one you can but shouldn’t.” Valentine hadn’t even heard Deacon’s approach.

“Do I know you?” Hancock asked, turning towards the newcomer, black eyes narrowed suspiciously. It occurred to Valentine that even if Hancock knew who Deacon was – he wasn’t quite sure what the Mayor of Goodneighbor was supposed to know about the Railroad – the ghoul probably wouldn’t be able to recognize him in his current state, between the change in glasses, the new accent, and, compared with his game appearance, the new face.

Deacon affected an innocent expression. “Who, me? Never met you in my life!” Probably a technical truth. “Name’s Sly Spune, this month’s Thieves’ Guild-designated stoolie.” That, Valentine knew, was a lie. For one thing, that month’s Thieves’ Guild-designated stoolie was ‘Shell Game’ Angel.

Valentine sighed. “Look, Hancock,” he started, trying to drag the conversation back on track, “we can’t get you back to Goodneighbor because… because there’s no Goodneighbor to get back to. None of that really existed. The Commonwealth was all some… simulation running in a sort of magic computer. Things got… weird, and some of the stuff in the simulation got made real. Like me…” he gestured towards Hancock. “Or you.”

Hancock stared at the synth for a moment. Finally, he asked, “Are… _you_ on something?”

“I’m a synth! Chems don’t even work on me!” Valentine pointed out, exasperated.

“Some troll drugs might,” Deacon supplied, unhelpfully.

“I’m not on troll drugs, Deacon,” Valentine sighed.

A light seemed to go on in Hancock’s head. “Deacon?” He paused a moment, as though making some connections, and peered at Deacon. “That the… Railroad guy?”

“Hell, no,” Deacon disagreed vehemently. “Here that’s something and some _one_ completely different.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and muttered, “Bastard ruined the word ‘railroad’ for me.”

Valentine rubbed the bridge of his nose and once more sighed. “Can we get back on topic?”

“You mean what chems you’re on?” asked Hancock.

“No, what you can’t say,” Deacon said as he knelt next to the dragon feed box before helping himself to a scoopful that he poured into a bag.

“No, that the Commonwealth doesn’t exist, so there’s no going back,” Valentine corrected.

“Sorry, Nick, not following you there,” Hancock said as he watched Deacon raid the dragon food. “You’re trying to tell me all my memories are fake? That Goodneighbor’s some… fantasy and this world with tiny dragons and rock-people and magic chems is the real one?”

“You really shouldn’t call trolls ‘rock-people,’” Deacon absently observed. “Unless you’re talking about gargoyles in which case… you still shouldn’t, but at least they don’t do anything about it.”

“Deacon, can you please stop derailing things for _two minutes_?” Valentine demanded.

Deacon shook his head. “Not really. Guess that’s what happens when you take me out of the Railroad. I derail!” Then he muttered, so quiet that Valentine could barely make out, “Or is that de-real…”

“I don’t suppose any of you have any proof about all of this?” Hancock asked, for once keeping himself from being side-tracked.

“Sure!” Deacon answered. “What’s your brother’s first name?” Beneath his evening-inappropriate shades, he watched the ghoul intently.

“That’s easy, it’s - ” Hancock stopped suddenly, black eyes wide opened. “It’s…” His expression moved through confusion and slowly into horror. “I can’t… I can’t remember that idiot’s name.”

“Because he’s only ever called ‘Mayor McDonough’ in the simulation,” Deacon explained. Then he tilted his head and rubbed his chin, considering. “Which I guess makes his first name ‘Mayor’…”

“What the – is going on?” Hancock demanded, still clearly shocked by the realization that he couldn’t think of his brother’s name. Then he thought back to what he had said and scowled. “And why the – can’t I say –?”

“ _Now_ you’re asking the _important_ questions!” Deacon grinned. “Go on!”

“Does this place have some sort of… I don’t know, profanity filter?” Hancock continued. “Why? They sure as hell don’t filter anything else! Heh. You know, there’s this club over on Elm…”

 _Yes, of course he’s found the zombie cabaret,_ Valentine thought, but before he could try once more to steer the conversation back on topic – or even figure out what the topic was supposed to be anymore – he heard Vimes shouting, “Nick, Sybil said you were checking the traps, but - ” then he stopped and looked at the assembled group. Deacon was over often enough that Sam didn’t take much notice of him, his gaze falling instead on Hancock. “You!”

Valentine heard a frustrated sigh from Deacon as Hancock turned to face the newcomer. “Me! But you would be…?” Then he frowned and narrowed his eyes. “Wait, you look familiar…”

“The wizards are running that bloody icono-game again, aren’t they?” Vimes asked. “What, not enough that they’ve got to break reality every few years, they have to try it every few months now?”

“No, Sam,” Nick said, holding a hand up to try and calm his husband. “Apparently he showed up back when it was still running. Even mentioned seeing the scorchbeast.”

“You mean to tell me that the Mayor of bloody Goodneighbor has been running around Ankh-Morpork for _three months_ now and nobody’s even noticed?” Vimes demanded. Then he thought about what he just said and sighed. “Actually, never mind, that makes perfect sense.” Valentine thought that Vimes was handling the news rather well, given his only encounter with the simulated Hancock, but then, he’d come to terms with the knowledge that no one real had died in the game some time ago. Why blame Hancock for what was essentially backstory? And clearly nothing he’d done since becoming real had been particularly out of the ordinary for Ankh-Morpork.

“Hell of a city,” Hancock smiled. “Plenty of ways to keep yourself… occupied. Wouldn’t mind tracking down the folks behind those, ‘Things to do in Ankh-Morpork When You’re Dead’ pamphlets, though. Pretty handy, but they left all of the more interesting options out, I figure I could help them fill a few holes…”

Valentine actually knew about those pamphlets. They were made by the club that Corporal Reg Shoe ran in his off-time. Valentine imagined Hancock tracking Reg down to talk to him about ‘filling holes’ and immediately regretted that line of thought. Vimes’ horrified expression suggested that his mind was torturing him in a similar manner.

“Speaking of, Whispers, I notice you’re walking with a bit of a limp, there,” Deacon, never one to ignore a chance to make a situation more awkward _or_ more chaotic, observed loudly.

Vimes immediately turned a shade of red so deep he was nearly purple while Hancock struggled so hard to keep back a laugh that he nearly choked before he just gave up and laughed. Valentine sighed. “Deacon. Shut up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **S:** This fic was inspired by the contrast between how Pratchett is willing to touch on very dark, very real topics while leaving one, single word completely off limits (although he sure will dance around it), and a certain somewhat juvenile mindset that including certain swears makes a thing seem more “real” and “mature” (I feel like some of the Fallout series is guilty of this, although in fairness, Fallout 4 isn’t really all that bad about it). In the end, both approaches inject a measure of artificiality, which can be fine, if that’s what you’re going for, but we decided to play around with it.
> 
>  **S:** Some fun things we checked into while writing this fic: of the Fallout 4 characters that got made real, only Deacon and Hancock actually have any dialogue/lines that use the f-word: Deacon uses it once as part of a casual joke, but otherwise mostly reserves it for when he’s really worked up. Hancock, on the other hand, uses it in speeches. 
> 
> **S:** As for our own fics, **Going Nuclear** contains the f-word eight times, but three times are in narrative, and twice it was part of scripted NPC lines (as opposed to the lines by characters who had gone real/off script). Nick does use the term at one point to describe the action act when he’d become fed up with Sam’s “old timey” slang, but otherwise, it was… Deacon, when he was really worked up. **Welcome Home** doesn’t contain the word, although Hancock attempted it in the scene where he arrived, and Deacon tried (and failed) to use it in the one-shot **Saturday Night Fight Club.**
> 
>  **S:** By the way, the title comes from [this tumblr post by Neil Gaiman](https://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/186181090391/what-was-the-discussion-about-using-fuck-in-good%22) about a discussion over the use of the f-word in Good Omens. He seems to be quoting Pratchett’s words directly, but as he’s a story teller himself, it may be paraphrased.
> 
>  **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	2. The Right Questions * Trash * Fetch Quest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [Fuck Everything](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulIOrQasR18&list=PLLEELrwJ-FypBYywOM81WCHmM4rOjKam0&index=3) by Jon Lajoie and [Fuck The Poor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcLAJbvwNQU&list=PLLEELrwJ-FypBYywOM81WCHmM4rOjKam0&index=4) by Tim Minchin. 
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic. Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_The Right Questions * Trash * Fetch Quest_

Plenty of places billed themselves as being “conveniently located”, but Fat Sally’s, on the Isle of Small Gods, really did fit the description, being not much more than a bridge away from where most of their little group either lived or worked. Of course, it was mostly a take-out place: sandwiches and donuts and coffee, but they had a few tables for those taking their lunch at a slower place. It was because of the location that the former Companions had decided to meet there for lunch while everyone was still in town after the wedding. Most of the group, including Preston and the old man, were already there when Deacon arrived. When he thought about it - and he definitely had - it was a pretty odd gathering. They weren’t, for the most part, a group that would have come together naturally, even with their shared connection to Vimes. But now there was a second connection they shared, the one of being the only ones in the city who had to deal with being former fictional characters from the same fictional setting. Well, okay, they weren’t _quite_ the only ones dealing with that, although at least one of the missing parties would be arriving shortly. 

From the sounds of things, Longfellow was finishing up an explanation of what he’d been up to.

“Just assumed that she had found herself a set of twins,” the old man was telling the others. “Turned out one of ‘em was a… what’d’they callit, a ‘changeling.’ Not really sure if that’s better or worse, but they paid well and left me alone about what I did with my free time, so I left them alone about theirs. Come to find out, the old broad goes way back with the Cap- er, Commander’s wife. Wanted to show their support if it was looking like the area was getting more… accepting of non-traditional arrangements, so they went to the wizards over at Bugarup to get here the fast way, and I just came along for the ride.” He frowned and put a hand over his stomach. “We’ll be takin’ the long way home, though. Just ain’t right, zappin’ a man to the other side of the damned Disc like that, doing who knows what to their insides…”

“So, what’s Fourecks like, anyway?” Piper asked as Deacon slipped into an empty seat with his beef, onion, and raspberry jam sandwich and his bottle of Cheery Cherry. None of them seemed to notice he had arrived, and he suspected it would stay that way until he said something. Normally at least Valentine would have noticed him before then, but things were getting worse.

“Bit dryer than I’d like. Hotter, too,” Longfellow admitted. “Other than that, though…” He shrugged. “Dangerous animals every time you turn around, unpredictable weather patterns, cart gangs roaming the wastes… kinda reminds me of home, some ways.”

Of all of them, only Valentine had more than a passing familiarity with Old Longfellow. Deacon knew he was someone Vimes and Valentine had met on that island up north, back when ‘north’ still meant something, and that was about it. Apparently the old man had developed some sort of fondness for Sam, or at the very least Sam did the sorts of things and made the sorts of choices that Longfellow had been coded to approve of, but Deacon wasn’t entirely convinced that that wasn’t pretty much how friendship worked, anyway. You found someone who did and said things that you liked being around to witness, and who was willing to listen when you had objections, right?

“Well, well, well, isn’t this a cozy little gathering?” a rough voice drawled out. The others looked up as Hancock arrived, coffee in one hand and a bag that suggested donuts in the other. Deacon assumed it was just normal coffee, although watching _Hancock,_ of all people, get knurd would probably be entertaining. After the encounter the night before had petered out, Deacon had slipped Hancock a note about the Fat Sally’s gathering. Hancock was a lot smarter than he sometimes let on. He’d already noticed the problem and had started asking the right questions. It was _useful_ to have him there, even if Deacon didn’t particularly care for the former mayor.

Hancock glanced at Deacon, and Deacon was fairly certain he’d figured out where that note had come from. Then he started moving around the table so that, like the former spy, he’d be able to watch the door. Piper, however, looked alarmed. “Hancock?! Wait, did they turn the game back on?”

“Naw, it’s not that,” Valentine answered, watching the ghoul as he made his way around the table. “Turns out, he’s been here since before it got shut down.” When Hancock sat down next to Deacon, the synth seemed to realize Deacon was there, and Nick gave him a confused look that turned thoughtful, as though he were trying to puzzle out why he hadn’t noticed Deacon before. Good. The sooner Valentine started noticing things were off, the sooner he could start putting together why.

“Really?” Piper asked, interrupting whatever thoughts Valentine might be having. “And just… nobody noticed?”

Hancock grinned. “It’s a big city.” He paused and muttered, “A _really_ big city.” Ankh-Morpork represented more people in one place than most of the Commonwealthers could have even imagined. It was an adjustment. “I’ve been spending a lot of time on and around Elm Street. They’re a pretty broad-minded group over there.”

“Elm?” Piper looked thoughtful. “That makes sense, then.” Elm Street was one of the bigger undead concentrations in the city. Biers and Strongfellows were both on that street, as was Mrs. Cake’s boarding house. “I guess you wouldn’t really stand out much around that part of town.”

Hancock gave an amused snort. “Not really, no, although, I gotta say, I feel I was a bit misled as to how welcoming this city is to ‘all types’. Maybe on a sort of… official, rules-type level, and, sure, _some_ areas are pretty welcoming, but I noticed I was drawing quite a few angry stares from the ‘upper stands’ types around where you’re living, Nicky-boy.” As Hancock finished his teasing commentary, he seemed to get distracted and peered over the heads of the others, looking towards the door. Deacon let his gaze follow in the direction where Hancock seemed to be watching – not that it was easy to tell, Hancock’s black eyes gave him an advantage that Deacon needed his shades for – and he spotted the likely cause of distraction. Ah.

Valentine, however, had not noticed, and seemed to feel the need to justify his choice of residence. He sighed, starting, “Yeah, I - ”

Hancock had stopped paying attention to Nick, and he interrupted with, “And then just when I’m complaining about other people staring, in walks a gal with snakes on her head, which… I’m pretty sure would have gotten stares even in Goodneighbor. Well played, Ankh-Morpork.” He chuckled.

Valentine realized, based on the description, that there was only one person that was likely to be, and he turned around to spot two women in Watch uniforms heading towards the counter, apparently to pick up an order for the Yard. They both wore sunglasses, although Deacon knew it was for different reasons. The darker-skinned woman did, indeed, have a head full of healthy, hissing snakes – the Watch’s only gorgon. The other woman was much, much paler, and wore a broad hat instead of a helmet.

“Cecilia,” Nick greeted, inclining his head. “Sally. Nice to see you two.”

Cecilia smiled. “Valentine. Shouldn’t you be somewhere else while you’re off shift, instead of hanging around here?”

Nick grinned. “I figured I’d catch up with some old friends while they were still in town. Sam’s with the boys right now, but we both got a shift later.”

Deacon knew that a lot in the Watch had given Nick trouble when his relationship with Vimes had first been revealed, but Cecilia was Epheban. Not only did they not have the same stigma against male-male relationships that Ankh-Morpork did, but they had a strong national tradition of, to put it gently, monster-loving2. It made sense that he’d have stayed on friendly terms with the gorgon.

While Cecilia paid and the two had to wait for everything to be bagged, Captain Sally swooped over to the group and stood behind Piper, throwing her arms around the reporter and leaning in, grinning. “Piper! Nice catching you here!” She glanced around the table, but her gaze stopped at Hancock. She had been there when the rest of the group had been made real, so she knew the others. “Who’s the new friend?” 

Piper grinned when Sally put her arms around her, but at the question, she explained, “Uh, this is Hancock.” She paused, then continued, “He’s from the Commonwealth, but it’s okay! Apparently he showed up from the game before it got shut down, so it’s not a new incursion or anything.”

Sally’s eyes widened in realization. During the game incursions, the Watch had been given training on how to distinguish Commonwealth weirdness from normal Ankh-Morpork weirdness, and it looked like something was clicking into place for Sally. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “That explains the heartbeat!”

Oh, goody, there was that vampire tendency to casually talk about people’s heartbeats or where their blood was rushing. Deacon wasn’t sure how Piper put up with that. Hancock, however, took it in stride. If anything, he just seemed amused. “That would be why, Miss…?”

Sally grinned and reached across the table to shake Hancock’s hand. Once more, Hancock’s black eyes made it hard to be sure what he was focusing on, but Deacon would be willing to bet money that Hancock had picked out the fangs and probably the ribbon. “I just go by Sally,” the Vampire said.

Hancock tilted his head and, with his free hand, gestured towards the building they were in, “Coincidence, I assume?”

Sally burst out laughing. “Oh, yeah. This place has been here way before I moved into town. It’s just that my full name is… kind of a mouth-full.” Then she turned her attention back to Piper. “Anyway, I have to go help Cecilia carry things back to the Yard. We still on for tonight?”

Piper gave a faint blush. “Sure are.”

“Great! See you later, then.” Sally nodded towards Hancock. “Nice to meet you, Hancock,” and then she waved to the rest of the group, “And good seeing all of you again!” With that, Sally went back to the counter to grab their order while Cecilia offered the group a friendly good-bye nod before they both left to supply Ankh-Morpork’s finest with donuts.

After they left, Hancock studied Piper, a faint smirk on his thin lips. She noticed the look and glared at him. “What?”

“A vampire, huh?” Hancock asked.

“Yeah,” she replied, as if daring him to make something of it. “So what? And don’t even start with any stupid biting jokes.”

Hancock held up both his hands in an expression of mock innocence. “Please! I saw the ribbon!”

_Bingo._

Piper relaxed a little. “Oh, okay. So you already know about that.” Then she paused and explained, “She says she’s trying to cut down on the casual heartbeat comments, but I guess she forgot.”

Hancock just laughed. “Given the sort that hang around Elm, I’ve gotten pretty used to that. Most of them seem to view me as close enough to being undead, but the beating heart gets a few comments. They’re used to, say, zombies, but actual ghouls are new to Ankh-Morpork.”

“No, Ankh-Morpork has _actual_ ghouls,” Deacon pointed out. “That’s why they’re thrown off when what amounts to a human with a skin condition goes around calling himself that.”

Preston snapped his head over to look at the former spy. “Deacon! When’d you get here?” he asked, shocked.

Hancock gave Preston a puzzled look. “He was sitting here when I showed up,” he pointed out. Most of those at the table looked confused to one degree or another. It was obvious that Piper and Longfellow hadn’t noticed Deacon sitting there, right next to Hancock, either. Valentine looked thoughtful again.

“… Really?” Preston asked, but now that he’d noticed that Deacon was there, he could also see that Deacon’s sandwich was more than half eaten and he had an open soda bottle in front of him. “D*mn, I guess I just wasn’t paying attention…”

Deacon sat bolt upright and stared at Preston. “ _What_ did you just say?” It was definitely getting worse.

Preston seemed puzzled by Deacon’s alarm. “D*mn - wait, that’s not right. D*mn? D*mn.”

“How are you even doing that?” asked Hancock.

“I don’t know, man,” Preston answered. “I’m just trying to say d*mn.” He frowned. “D*mn*t.”

Longfellow asked. “You trying to say ‘damn’?”

“Yeah!” replied Preston. “It’s just suddenly, I can’t!”

Valentine rubbed his chin and said thoughtfully, “Y’know, Carrot does that, sometimes. Not ‘d*mn’, but - ” He cut himself off as he realized what he’d just said. “Now I’m doing it.”

Hancock looked from one member of the group to the other, frowning. Then he started talking. “Damn. Damn damn damn damn damn. Well, okay, I can still say _that_ one. Goddamnit mother–er. Nope!” He scowled. “Still can’t manage the other one!”

“What other one?” Preston asked.

Deacon sighed and rolled his eyes. “You sweet, naive boy,” he said, letting a touch of mockery color his tone. He probably shouldn’t have been so harsh on the kid. Preston had been practically built around the concept of restored and restoring hope, after all, while Deacon had been ‘born’ cynical. But just like Deacon had worried in the game about what would happen when the force that the Minutemen had built fell under the command of someone who _wasn’t_ Whispers, here he can’t help but wonder what’d happen when Ankh-Morpork really started flexing that clacks network that Garvey was helping them build.

Granted, Preston had been right back when he’d pointed out that it wasn’t like Deacon had any more experience in how the ‘real world’ worked than he did. Maybe the cynicism he’d been made with would prove to be unfounded. He’d actually rather that Preston be right in hoping for the best. Wouldn’t it be nice to be wrong about something like this?

But Deacon didn’t think he was.

Preston looked ready to snap back at Deacon’s mockery, but before he could say anything, Piper shouted, “Wait!” She pointed at Deacon. “Deacon, weren’t you in my office asking about people saying ‘the f-bomb’ yesterday?”

“Why, yes, Piper,” Deacon answered. “I was! Glad to see that keen journalistic mind at work!”

Hancock sounded exasperated as he spoke. “You mean to tell me that _none_ of the rest of you noticed that we can’t say –,” He stopped and then tried again. “That we can’t say –,” He stopped again, but seemed to give up. “That we can’t say the f-word, anymore?!”

Valentine shrugged. “I can’t say it’s ever been that big a part of my vocabulary,” he admitted.

Deacon raised his eyebrows behind his glasses. “You mean to tell me you and Sam have never tried to say it during the actual act?”

The synth affected an offended look. “Deacon, some of us are a bit classier than that, and we make love instead.”

Deacon rolled his eyes. “Nick, you’re never in a million years going to convince me that Whispers is classy in bed.” Mostly because if Valentine looked ready to try, Deacon was going to clap his hands over his ears and make a break for it.

Valentine grunted and admitted, “Not really, no. He says things like ‘bugger’. I’d almost _rather_ he say ‘–‘” Valentine blinked. “Okay, that definitely was strange.”

“It’s weird,” Preston admitted, rubbing his chin, “but... I don’t see what’s the big deal. So, there’s a few words we can’t say, it doesn’t really seem to be hurting anything.”

“No,” Piper argued, shaking her head. “I think this might be important, especially if it’s getting worse. Like, what happens when we run out of words?”

Preston blinked and stared at the reporter. “You seriously think we’ll somehow ‘run out of words’ just because some people have to cut down on swearing?”

“Well,” Piper started, then hesitated. “I don’t know! But this is obviously some sort of weird city-wide curse!”

Preston shook his head. “I’m not so sure about that. The d*mn thing is new, but I don’t think I’ve heard anyone say –, er, the f-bomb, and some of the guards working for the clacks definitely seem like they would if they could.”

Longfellow added, “Can’t say I’ve heard it in Fourecks, either, and I _know_ some of those carters would.”

“So, it’s even bigger than the city!” Piper exclaimed. “But I still think it’s some sort of curse or something.” She paused, then declared, “Y’know, I bet a wizard did it.”

Valentine just stared at her for a moment. “Why would a wizard curse people so they can’t say - so they can’t swear?”

“I don’t know!” Piper answered, clinging to her theory despite the complete lack of any evidence. “It - It just seems like something a wizard would do! Maybe he just doesn’t want to be reminded of what he can’t do?”

“What can’t he do?” Hancock asked.

“Have sex,” Deacon answered.

“What?” Hancock seemed to have trouble with the concept. “Why?”

Deacon shrugged. “Wizards take a vow of celibacy.”

Hancock stared. “Why would they do that?”

“I guess they think it’s worth the power?” Deacon suggested, which wasn’t really an answer, he knew, except in an indirect way. ‘Do this or we won’t give you power’ sort of thing.

Hancock snorted dismissively. “Then they’re idiots.”

Piper tried to pull the topic back on ‘a wizard did it’ and away from who they might hypothetically do. “Nick, your brother’s a wizard now, right?”

“Nick has a brother?” Hancock asked.

Valentine sighed. “Long story,” he answered the ghoul, then, to Piper, he clarified, “And sort of. He’s still a student.”

Piper waved a hand. “Close enough! He should still be able to help us figure this out. Do you think he’s out of class now?”

Valentine rolled his eyes. “He’s practically _always_ out of class. Unseen scheduling is… something else.”

Piper stood up. “Well, I’d like to go talk to him, them.”

“What, right now?” Preston asked, although he instinctively stood up as well.

The reporter nodded. “Sure, why not? If there might be a story in it, it counts as on the job for me. If the rest of you had somewhere else to be, you don’t have to come along.”

Deacon finished his cola. “Well, I’m game.”

“Sure,” Preston shrugged. “I don’t have anything going on until it’s time to get back to Hergen.”

Piper turned towards Nick. “You got the time? It’ll be easier if you’re there, since he’s your brother.”

Valentine sighed and stood up. “I don’t go on shift until later this evening, so… all right, then.” He looked at the others. “Seems a little silly, but I gotta admit I’m pretty curious, too.”

Deacon grinned. Good old Piper. Always pointed in the right direction for all the wrong reasons. ‘Hey, I think the mayor is a synth!’ ‘Sounds possible. What’s your evidence?’ ‘Oh, he sat at the wrong seat at Power Noodles!’ It was like her instincts were good, but she couldn’t put a finger on why she suspected what she did, so her brain just made up whatever to fill the gaps. Still, at least now, because of her, they would be asking the right questions to the right people, even if it wasn’t for the right reasons. So… progress.

2 And that was putting it far more gently than Deacon really wanted to, but he seemed to be having trouble even thinking the word in his own head.

* * *

“These colors are completely wrong!”

The group had found their way to the High Energy Magic building after several wrong turns. Preston had commented to the others that he was pretty sure the campus had been different from what it had been like at the wedding, and he was pretty sure _that_ was different when compared with the only other time he’d seen it, and Valentine had grumbled that it just did that. A lot. Odd, but that was okay. Preston had spent time in Chimeria. He could deal with a shifting landscape.

When they finally found the right building, they walked into a very intense debate between wizards about… colors? Wizards really would argue about anything, wouldn’t they? The group were a pretty diverse bunch, but the one who’d been shouting when they entered definitely sounded Morporkian. The one he was yelling at was a bit darker and looked like he might be Mediterranean. Wait, no, that wasn’t right. It was somewhere on the other side of the Circle Sea. Tsort? Ephebe?

Whoever he was, he was scowling angrily at the Morporkian. “And what exactly is wrong about them?” 

The Morporkian answered, exasperated, “There’s not enough of them! You were supposed to use the University colors on these sigils!”

The possibly-Epheban answered, tone increasingly irate, “I _did_! Yellow, purple, and wine!”

“What?!” yelled the Morporkian. He was… kind of greasy, actually, and appeared to have a… piece of pizza in his robe’s pocket? Well, Preston’d seen people stash food in stranger places. “It’s yellow, purple, burgundy, and _blue!_ How can you miss the shield’s primary color?”

The one student wizard that Preston could actually attach a name to, DiMA, tried to speak “Excuse me-” but was quickly cut off. 

“ _ **That**_ is the shield’s primary color!” The possibly-Tsortean pointed to the color he had called ‘wine’. 

“No! The shield is blue! Like the sea!” shouted the Morporkian. 

Preston had to admit, it certainly looked like the shield had blue in it to him.

“No, the shield is **wine** , like the wine-dark sea!” yelled the possibly-Epheban. Probably Epheban? 

Preston decided he should maybe ask one of the others before he said anything out loud. Ephebans and Tsorteans probably wouldn’t want to get mixed up. Hadn’t they been building wooden horses at each other at the Commander’s wedding?

“I think-” DiMA made another attempt at speaking.

“Are you blind?!” yelled the Morporkian.

“Maybe color blind…” grumbled the Agatean student.

The Epheban replied proudly, “Not at all! I can see octarine perfectly well, after all!”

“Yes, but you cannot see blue,” DiMA finally managed a complete sentence. “Epheban has no language for that color,” so he _was_ Epheban! Preston made a mental note, “so it impairs their ability to perceive it. The language we have to describe reality impacts our ability to process it; when the language is incomplete, so is our reality.”

“I thought ‘blue’ was just another Morporkian word for ‘wine-color’?” The Epheban wizard sounded confused. 

The Morporkian sounded exasperated. “ _Everything’s_ about wine for you Ephebans!”

The last of the four student wizards finally spoke up, sounding thoughtful, “Actually, I’ve heard something about this.” He looked like he was probably Klatchian. Of course, ‘Klatch’ was a big area that included a lot of different countries, and he didn’t yet have enough of a basis of comparison to figure out which one. Of course, in Preston’s experience, no one from Klatch ever expected someone from the Sto Plains to be able to tell them apart, but that didn’t mean Preston shouldn’t try. “There are tribes in Howandaland that the Seriphate trades with,” continued the Klatchian man. “A few years ago, it was discovered that they couldn’t pick blue from green, but could tell the different greens apart more easily than the Klatchians who spoke with them.”

“So how’d you use that to rip ‘em off?” asked the Morporkian.

“Excuse me,” the Klatchian man answered. He sounded offended, and Preston couldn’t blame him, “but unlike you Morporkian dogs, we are _honorable_ trading partners!”

Both the Epheban student and the Agatean one snickered at the Klatchian student’s claims. Then the Agatean said haughtily, “I am _from_ a shipping family, so I can say with confidence that you’re _all_ barbarians.” Wooo, boy, this was just going to go downhill, wasn’t it?

While the wizard argument devolved into ‘Who’s more untrustworthy than whom’ bickering, Hancock leaned in towards the rest of the group. “Jeeze, these guys really need to get laid or something.” Despite his words, Hancock sounded like he was enjoying the spectacle. 

“Or a drink,” muttered Old Longfellow.

“That falls under ‘or something’,” answered Hancock.

Nick observed dryly, “They’ll have to settle for that ‘or something’.”

Hancock seemed to be recalling something that had been said earlier. “Oh, yeah. Vow of celibacy. How’s that supposed to give them power, anyway?”

Piper snorted. “Wizards think that if a woman touches their staff, they lose their magic.” 

There was a moment when no one said anything. Finally, Hancock asked, “Has, erm, anyone told them about sonkies?”

Their discussion thankfully didn’t go any farther down that path because the Agatean wizard had finally noticed they were there. He demonstrated this fact by pointing and screaming, “What’s _that_ doing here?!” Hancock looked ready to give a response - poor guy was probably used to being called ‘that’ - but then the wizard continued, “Women aren’t allowed on University grounds! Everyone knows that!” Seriously? 

Piper narrowed her eyes and looked ready to choke someone. “But there are women cooks and cleaners all over the campus!” she pointed out.

Deacon muttered dryly, “Yeah, but didn’t you know? Servants are invisible.” Deacon was one cynical son of a gun, but even Preston had to admit he was probably right there. Speaking of invisible, though, it was kind of funny. Somehow, Preston had almost forgotten that Deacon had been with the group until he spoke up.

The Morporkian wizard frowned and seemed to notice what the Agatean one had missed, because _he_ pointed at John Hancock, frowning. "Wait a minute, what's _he_ doing here?” Hancock again looked ready to say something, but then the wizard added, “He wasn't one of the Companions that the Commander brought back with him!" 

Oh, okay, the problem wasn’t that Hancock was a ghoul, just that was from the game.

"Sure he was,” Deacon answered with all confidence. “What, not paying attention?"

Preston bit back a laugh while the wizard hesitated. "... I mean... I could have sworn..."

"No,” sighed Nick. “he wasn't there. From what we can tell, he was dragged in about the same time as the scorchbeast."

DiMA looked a bit relieved - worried about new cases of the game acting up, maybe? But Deacon just looked disappointed. "Aw, c'mon, man, I almost had 'im!"

Then Nick cleared his throat and tried to get the conversation on track. “If you boys don’t mind, I have to borrow my brother here for a moment.” 

For a moment, Preston wondered why Nick didn’t want to include the other wizards in the conversation. They might have ideas, too! But then he thought about… literally the entire conversation Preston had witnessed since entering the room and decided that the Detective had made the right call. 

DiMA nodded, and gestured for the group to follow him towards one of the more out of the way corners of the room. The room seemed to have more corners than was really sensible. As they walked, Hancock looked thoughtful and studied DiMA. Finally he spoke. “I’ve seen you… you were there when that dra- er, ‘scorchbeast’ showed up. You were with that Watch woman with the extra thumb.”

DiMA looked startled. “You were there? I’m afraid I didn’t see you.”

Hancock shrugged. “Understandable. You were a bit… preoccupied.”

“I admit, it’s a relief to know that you’re not the result of a more _recent_ game manifestation. I was briefly concerned that it might somehow be running again.”

Hancock looked a bit uncomfortable. “Uhm. Yeah. Still coming to terms with the whole ‘game’ business.” 

Preston sure did understand _that_. He usually tried not to think about it himself. 

Deacon gestured to a table with two coffee machines sitting on it and suggested, sounding entirely too cheerful as he said, “I think they have some coffee over there that might help with that!”

Hancock scowled. “If you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about, _no thanks._ I haven’t had _nearly_ enough to drink so far today for _that_ stuff.”

Deacon blinked. “Wait. You already know about it? _You’ve_ tried Klatchian coffee?” He paused briefly, then continued. “And I wasn’t there to see it? Darn! I mean, damn!” Deacon gave an exasperated sigh. “Seriously?”

“Which actually brings us to the reason we’re here,” Preston said, fighting down a chuckle. Might as well use that as an opportunity to get back on track. “DiMA, we’ve been having trouble saying certain words, and Piper thought that magic might have something to do with it.”

“There is a great deal of power in language,” DiMA replied in a thoughtful tone. “May I ask which words have been giving you trouble?”

“Mostly the curse words,” Preston answered.

DiMA raised his… eye-brows? Brow-paint? And sounded concerned. “You shouldn’t be trying to curse anyone without training.”

“Not that kind of curse, DiMA,” explained Valentine. “Nobody’s trying to curse anyone. We’re just talking about run-of-the-mill swear words, like ‘d*mn’ or ‘sh*t’.” As what Nick just said caught up with him, he made an annoyed growling sound. “Only without the audible asterisks replacing the vowels.”

“He meant to say ‘damn’ or ‘shit,’ just to clarify,” Deacon said, and then he added in a mutter, “and I’m _really_ glad that didn’t come out ‘darn’ and ‘shoot’.”

“And there’s one that nobody can say at all: the f-bomb,” Piper added.

DiMA gave the others a confused frown. “The... eff bomb?” 

Preston supposed that DiMA really didn’t seem much like the swearing sort.

Valentine sighed. “The word that starts with ‘f’ and means, erm, to have sex.”

“Fornicate?” asked DiMA.

“The shorter one.” Nick was starting to sound a little frustrated.

“Frigg?” asked DiMA.

“Who the frigg says frigg?” Preston asked, but then stopped. That was _not_ what he had intended to say. He muttered, “Never mind, I guess it’s me, now.”

Valentine kept trying. “Four letters.”

“Feak?” answered DiMA. 

How the heck, er, hell were there _that_ many f-words that meant ‘sex’ but weren’t f-. Weren’t f-. Weren’t that other one?

“Look,” Deacon interrupted the guessing game, “I’ll just spell it out. Eff. ---. Sea. Kay.” He blinked, then shouted in frustration, “Oh, come ON!”

“You, uhm, left a you out,” Hancock observed.

“I know!” yelled Deacon.

DiMA looked thoughtful, like he was rearranging letters in his head. “Ah. That one.”

“Yes!” shouted several of the others at once.

DiMA opened and closed his mouth a few times, as if trying to say something. Finally, what he did say was, “You’re correct.” He paused again, once more considering the problem. “Do you know if this is a recent change, or has it always been like this?”

“I only really _noticed_ it today,” Piper admitted, “but I don’t remember hearing anyone saying it since I got here.” There was a general murmur of agreement from the others. 

“I realized I couldn’t say it within a minute of showing up on Elm,” Hancock shrugged.

Old Longfellow chuckled. “Go straight for the strong stuff, don’t you?”

Hancock smirked. “When that’s an option.”

Piper ignored those two and continued, “But anyway, I was thinking maybe it’s some sort of magic spell? Like, I don’t know, some wizard got upset about people swearing?”

DiMA shook his head. “A spell powerful enough to do something like this on a large scale…” He trailed off and seemed to be thinking once more, then asked, “Perhaps it’s a local effect?”

Preston shook his head and noticed that Old Longfellow was doing so as well. 

“Ah,” began DiMA. “Well, as I was saying, a spell powerful enough to affect this many people, _especially_ if it’s not local, would have a lot of more… obvious side-effects. This is far too subtle for magic, more like… something woven into reality itself…”

“But we could say it in the Commonwealth,” Nick pointed out.

“Are you certain?” asked DiMA.

Deacon answered, “Abso-flipping-lutely.” 

To be honest, Preston didn’t recall ever using that word, but he was pretty sure he heard raiders using it.

DiMA said quietly, as though to himself, “Which would explain why you noticed it’s missing now.”

“You can’t miss what you never knew about,” Deacon agreed.

“But I don’t get it,” started Piper. “Wasn’t the Commonwealth… in the game? Which was in Hex, which is… right here,” she gestured at Hex, “in reality. If it’s ‘woven into reality itself’, why would we have been able to say it?”

DiMA rubbed his chin as he considered. “It’s true that the initial parameters for the… simulation were set by Mister Stibbons, and once the simulation was repurposed as a game, further details were created by the students who were part of the project. However, other details were left to Hex to generate. Some of Mister Stibbons’s notes on the project suggested that Hex may have been pulling from some sort of an… external template.”

“External to what?” asked Nick.

“Everything.” DiMA paused a moment. “If this is the case, perhaps the… simulation was able to bend some of reality’s rules, because it was templating from another reality.”

The entire group fell into silence as what DiMA said sank in. Piper asked softly, “So you’re saying there’s… there’s a _real_ Commonwealth out there somewhere?” 

“Could we… could we go home?” Preston wondered out loud. The Commonwealth had its flaws - lots of them - but it was still the place his heart called home, even if it wasn’t real. If it really existed out there somewhere…

Deacon interrupted his musings with his usual brand of cynicism. “And what, bump off the Preston Garvey, Minuteman, already living there? Replace him? Or just have two of you running around? Yeah, that’ll go over well in a Commonwealth already paranoid about synth infiltrations!” 

Ugh. But unfortunately, Deacon once more had a point.

“Besides,” DiMA added, “given that so many details were created by Mister Stibbons or his students, it’s likely that any template out there is very different from what we actually experienced. For example, all of us were not generated but designed.”

“Plus or minus a few significant background details,” Deacon muttered bitterly. 

“However,” DiMA continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “it is likely that the template, much like the world we knew in the simulation, was a globe rather than a disk. One of Mister Stibbons’s original parameters was to minimize the influence of external elements, such as gods. Mister Stibbons has experience with such a world in the form of Roundworld, a universe where habitable planets are globes. Roundworld is currently in Professor Rincewind’s office.”

Wait, did he just say there was a universe in someone’s office?

Valentine rubbed the bridge of his nose and muttered, “This again…” 

Huh. Guess he did say that. And Nick knew about it. 

“You. He. You guys,” Piper started. For once, the writer was having trouble finding the words. “You guys have a whole _universe_ in someone’s office?”

“Thanks for asking for an explanation, Piper, because I was wondering the same thing,” said Preston.

“Yes,” answered DiMA. “On the top shelf of his bookcase. A whole phase set of universes, in fact.” 

Right, okay, that clarified absolutely nothing. 

“ _ **How?**_ ” exclaimed Piper. 

“It’s much smaller from the outside,” DiMA answered, once more actually explaining absolutely nothing.

“Well, this is great and all and is _sure_ to help with any existential crisis any of us may be dealing with,” Deacon interrupted, “but how does this help with the swearing?”

“Mostly as a means to test a hypothesis,” DiMA replied, “a way to verify that the problem is part of the rules of our reality, because we have access to a reality with different rules.”

Preston blinked. “Wait, so we can just… go there?” He wasn’t really expecting an answer that made sense at this point, but he _had_ to try. 

“Hex has gotten quite good with the transfers, but we would need to be careful,” DiMA said. “Currently, Roundworld’s primary timeline is one where humanity develops the technology to leave Earth just in time to avoid an extinction level event in the form of a massive meteor strike and subsequent ice age.”

“So… that place is definitely not _too_ much like the simulation,” Deacon observed. 

An Earth that never had their war, where humanity successfully made it to the stars instead… wow. Just. Wow.

DiMA nodded and continued, “The faculty have grown… quite protective of Roundworld and would respond badly if anything were to upset that specific timeline.”

“Well, that’s good,” said Preston. The idea of such a world was really incredible, but Preston sure as heck wouldn’t want to be responsible for derailing something as wonderful as that. It would have to be enough just to know that it could exist _somewhere._

“This means that any tests we wanted to perform would have to be far away from any civilization, in an area chosen by Hex to have negligible impact on their primary timeline, and would have to be completed as swiftly as possible,” explained DiMA.

“Well, I’m game,” Hancock said. “This thing’s been getting worse, and I can’t let myself be reduced to swears like ‘gadzooks’ or ‘zounds’. Really clashes with the whole image, y’dig?”

DiMA nodded. “In that case, all we need to perform the test is some chalk and three to five large pieces of old furniture.”

Piper frowned and narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Why do we need old furniture?”

“Transformation magic works most reliably when basic mass conservation rules are followed,” explained DiMA. “Solid-to-solid transformations are simplest. Other transformations, such as pure thaumic energy to solid, will increase the odds of long-term magical side-effects on your bodies.” 

“Listen, speaking as someone who lives nearby, I’m thinking that avoiding magic side-effects? Probably a good thing!” Deacon said. “It’s not all just cute little talking rats, you know.” 

Where did Deacon live, anyway? Sounded like it might be in the Unreal Estates, but why? Did he live there just so he could complain about magic?

“For the right high, it might be worth it,” Hancock grinned, “but not if we’re just popping in, swearing, and leaving.”

Piper pushed the issue. “But that’s what I don’t understand! Why is this transformation magic? Shouldn’t it be, like, teleporting magic, or whatever?”

“Teleportation magic is built on transformation magic,” said DiMA. “You are transformed into energy, then your mind, your… essential qualia is sent to the destination, where the energy is transformed back into matter templating to the engram of the qualia. But the process itself takes a great deal of energy, especially since you’ll be crossing reality borders, such that without either putting more magic into the process or providing extra matter at the destination, Hex would be unable to reform you.”

Piper sighed. “This is giving me a headache. Wait, so what matter is Hex using on the _inside_ of the, uhm, ‘Roundworld’.”

DiMA said, “We’ll attempt to select an out of the way location with enough vegetation for the process.” 

“And on this side, it, I mean, he uses… old furniture?” Preston asked. D*mn, he needed to get better about that. Just because Hex was a… weird computer running on ants didn’t mean that Preston had any business not respecting him as a person. He was just a weird, immobile ant-powered person.

“Yes,” answered DiMA, who didn’t seem like he was going to point out the mistake. “That’s what he originally used when creating bodies for us outside of the simulation. Unfortunately, with all the… unmonitored creations that happened during the game rewrite,” DiMA glanced at Hancock, “the University’s supply of unused furniture was depleted.”

“You mean to tell me you don’t have any random trash just lying around you could use?” Old Longfellow asked.

DiMA considered, “Well, there are the University rubbish piles…”

“The rubbish piles,” said Deacon. “You mean, those things that keep leaking magic all over the Backs and Sides and Fronts? The reason those areas get marked with, ‘Watch for winged cobblestones!’ signs, and why people who live near there developed wild-shrubbery wrangling as a sport? Those rubbish piles? Because I’m thinking that if we’re trying to avoid magic side-effects…” 

“And to be honest,” Nick began, rubbing the back of his head, “I, uh, think I have enough… issues with having woken up in a rubbish pile without adding being literally made of trash to it.” 

Piper shook her head. “I guess it’s just… weird to think that we’re not made of… you know, people-stuff.”

DiMA tilted his head as if trying to come up with a solution. “If it would help you to feel more comfortable, we could enlist the aid of an Igor…”

“Oh, gods, no!” Preston interrupted. “Don’t get me wrong, the one I work with saved my arm for me, and I appreciate that, but… well, I know how they source things when they’re not just re-attaching a bit you already had, and I’d rather not ask about that.”

Hancock looked a little ill. “Ah, yeah, I know I _look_ like a cadaver, but let’s not go that route?”

“Who cares?” Old Longfellow asked, exasperated. “Plants grow in shit, animals eat the plants, people eat the plants and animals. We’re all made of shit, ‘cept maybe the robots. What difference does it make?”

Deacon looked at the old hunter and remarked dryly, “Spoken like someone who’s never encountered one of Modo’s compost heaps.”

* * *

The group meandered more or less in the direction of Scoone Avenue, although Valentine suspected the group would start breaking apart before they got to the Vimes estate. Deacon was talking excitedly about their conversation with DiMA and being, well, Deacon about it.

“So he just gave us a fetch quest, right?” he was saying. “It’s not just me, DiMA just assigned us all a fetch quest.”

Old Longfellow frowned. “Fetch quest?”

“You know. ‘Go fetch some furniture and come back!’ Fetch quest!” explained Deacon. “Didn’t you run into people doing that to Whi- to Sam while he was dragging you around the island?”

“Is that what that’s called?” Longfellow asked, scratching absently at his beard. “Come to think of it, that machine man had done that to ‘im a few times…”

Valentine snapped, “He’s got a name, you know.” He was getting pretty tired of that ‘machine man’ business, especially when he knew that DiMA was literally _exactly_ as much a person as Old Longfollow himself.

Before Longfollow could answer (not that Valentine was expecting anything resembling an apology from the man), Piper moved the conversation along and argued, “It’s not a ‘fetch quest’, we just need to find a few things. And, uhm. Bring them back! But still. You can’t just keep obsessing over coming from a game, you’ll make yourself crazy!”

“Of course!” Deacon replied, chipper tone turning a bit caustic. “Clearly the only sane thing to do is live in complete denial about where we came from!”

“I didn’t say that-” Piper protested.

“Right,” Deacon answered with a shrug, dropping the caustic edge. “And I’m not obsessing over it. I just acknowledge that it happened and that it sometimes affects what we do. _Everyone’s_ past affects them; that’s not something unique to ex-fictional-characters.”

“This is all very interesting,” Old Longfellow observed in an extremely bored tone that said ‘this is not interesting at all’, “but I’m going to leave those of you that live here to figure out your little ‘fetch quest’ and see if I can’t find myself a bar that opens early.”

“In this city I’d be more surprised if you couldn’t,” muttered Nick. Heck, some of them never closed.

As Longfellow parted ways with the group, Preston, of all people, decided to pull at the existential threads that Deacon had brought up. “Anyway, I don’t think it’s _that_ bad. We’re real now, and that’s what’s important. Besides, I kind of like the whole ‘game inventory’ thing that seems attached to my coat. It’s part of why I was so upset when the druids cut off my sleeve.” He paused and corrected, “Well, and my arm, but it turned out _that_ was easier to fix.” He gave the others a self-depreciating grin at the idea that sometimes clothes were harder to fix than people. “Luckily, the inventory seems to still work.”

“Druids, huh?” asked Hancock. “So that’s what happened to your sleeves?”

“Yeah,” admitted Preston. “I cut the other one off to even it out, but I didn’t lose that one. Happened over in Llamedos, but it turned out to be some kind of misunderstanding. One of them had read one of their stone circles wrong or something and decided their gods wanted us sacrificed. They eventually got their reading right, something about ‘rebooting’ the circle, however _that_ works, and we were able to negotiate a path through, but the fighting got pretty intense for awhile.” Preston sounded… pretty calm in discussing a stone-computer-based mishap that had led to his arm being cut off.

Hancock barked a laugh. “Sounds pretty wild out there.”

“Oh, it can be,” the former Minuteman answered. “Don’t get me wrong, if you’re on the trains or the major roads, it’s safer than the Commonwealth, although even there you get the occasional bandits. If you’re lucky, they’re Guild, and then it’s just some overblown theatrics where they pretend to scare you into giving them money, but you’re really just paying them to keep the roads clear of the bandits that _don’t_ just play pretend. But with the Trunk, we’re often in places that are way off the beaten path, plenty of bandits, almost none of them Guild, and it gets worse than that. We’ve dealt with chimeras, basilisks, griffins… that last one was because we needed its tears to deal with the basilisk. But still, this world, it’s… pretty incredible. It’s _alive_ in a way I don’t remember the Commonwealth being, and a lot of it’s really beautiful.”

“Sounds kinda nice, actually,” Hancock said thoughtfully. He did enjoy the occasional ‘walkabout’ from his position, didn’t he?

“It is,” Preston agreed. Then something seemed to occur to him. “Although actually… do you guys need me for the furniture? I don’t really know the city as well as you do, and I was planning on seeing if I couldn’t get my coat repaired while I was in town.

Nick grinned. “Just make sure you find a tailor instead of a Seamstress.”

Preston rolled his eyes, but returned the grin. “I know the city well enough not to make _that_ mistake, Nick. Anyway, you guys take care of yourselves, I’ll catch up with you later.” He waved and took a turn widdershins from the others. 

“See you, Preston!” Piper called after him. Then she looked at the others. “You know, I’ve been thinking. About the furniture thing. Doesn’t Blue have an attic just _full_ of old stuff he doesn’t use? _Multiple_ attics full!”

“Technically, yeah,” Valentine admitted, “but he still thinks of all of those things as Sybil’s. He’d want to check with her first.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem!” Piper said. 

“Maybe not,” Valentine admitted, “but how do we even explain this? ‘Hey, sorry, but we can’t use all the dirty words that we’re used to, so we wanted to use some old furniture so DiMA and Hex can send us to a world they have sitting around in one of the University offices to see if we can curse there.’”

Deacon made an exasperated noise and muttered under his breath, “Truth really is stranger than fiction around here, huh?” Louder, he added, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “Just tell them something they’ve got a chance of believing!” 

“I can’t just lie to them!” Valentine objected. 

The group had been nearing Vimes’s home - but wasn’t it Valentine’s home, too? - and from where they were walking, they could see Sybil was out feeding some of her dragons. “Okay, fine,” Deacon answered. “Just leave it to me!” Then, before Valentine could stop him, Deacon sauntered right up towards Sybil. As he got nearer, there was a subtle shift in his posture. He hunched up just slightly, as though about to admit something embarrassing. “Oh, hey, Sybil. I was hoping you’d be in.”

“Mister Deacon!” Sybil slid her face shield up and beamed at the man. The woman always seemed to view Deacon as her husband’s “jolly jokester” of a friend. “How nice of you to come by for a visit. I’m afraid that Sam’s busy getting ready for his shift-”

“Actually, I wanted to speak with you,” Deacon admitted. “I’ve been trying to get Fluffy trained a bit better on what’s safe for her to eat so I could, you know, give her a little more room to roam back in my place when I’m not around.” He rubbed the back of his head while he continued. “Looks like I got ahead of myself, because I left her alone a few hours yesterday and when I got back, she had gotten acid on my table, a couple of chairs, and my bed. They’re wrecked past using, now.” Then he hesitated very convincingly before finishing, “Anyway, I was wondering if you had any advice for this type of training, maybe some preventive measures for when you think your dragon’s had too much wood, that sort of thing?”

… Oh. Huh. And he didn’t even ask for the furniture at all. He asked about her favorite subject, while throwing out the need for furniture as an incidental. Clever b*st*rd. Erm. Bastard. That was going to work, wasn’t it?

Sybil looked very concerned. Of course she did. Deacon claimed to have a potentially sick dragon on his hands, after all. “Oh, that poor dear!” Then something else occurred to her, and she added “Oh, you poor man! You’ll be needing a new bed and table, won’t you?” 

Yep. That was definitely going to work.

Deacon but up his hands in protest. “Oh, no, I couldn’t - ”

“Nonsense!” Sybil argued in that tone she had that there was no arguing with. “We’ve got more than we need, and there’s some space in the attic that’s wanted clearing out for ages! I insist!”

“Well, in that case…” Deacon agreed with apparent reluctance. Valentine just stared at him.

“Hey, guys,” interrupted Piper, who was clearly struggling to keep a straight face, “it was nice catching up, but I should really get back to the Times. I’ll talk with you later!”

“Oh, Miss Wright!” Sybil called. “Will you and Nat be by for the game next week?”

“Count on it, ma’am!” Piper waved and walked off in the general direction of Gleam Street.

Sybil finally seemed to spot the final member of their little group. She smiled at John Hancock and began, “Oh, excuse me. I don’t believe we’ve met - ”

“New zombie in the Watch,” Deacon answered. “Just joined.”

Hancock gave Deacon an annoyed look, eyes narrowed, and just said, “No.” Then he turned towards Sybil, took off his hat, and dipped his head, smiling. “The name’s John Hancock, mayor- well, former mayor, I guess, of Goodneighbor. That would be a settlement in the Commonwealth, from the… icono-game?” He glanced at Valentine for confirmation, and Nick nodded. “I’m what we referred to as a ghoul there.”

Sybil’s eyes widened in realization. “Oh! Then you’re friends with Nick and Mister Deacon?” Valentine couldn’t help but be amused that she used _his_ first name, but Deacon, who only had one name (unknown number of aliases notwithstanding), was apparently a ‘Mister’.

“Sure!” Deacon replied immediately, even though Valentine was fairly certain he and Hancock didn’t actually care much for each other.

“You know,” Valentine said after only a moment’s thought, “I suppose you could say that.”

Sybil brightened. “Well, any friend of our Nick is welcome here!”

Hancock grinned. “Thank you, uhm…” 

“Please, call me Sybil!”

Deacon looked ready to burst out laughing for just a moment, but then he regained his poker face. Valentine found himself wondering what the joke was.

“Sybil,” replied Hancock. “Pleasure to meet you, but I really should be moving on.”

“Hey, Hancock,” Valentine caught his attention before he could get too far. “You got a place we can leave a message if we need to get ahold of you?”

“Sure.” Hancock grinned. “Leave a message with the Fresh Start Club. Or just pass it on to Reg, he’ll find me.” He had mentioned wanting to track down the Fresh Start Club the day before, hadn’t he? Sounded like he’d succeeded. Hancock strolled off with a wave, leaving Valentine with Deacon and Sybil. 

Valentine turned towards Sybil and excused himself. “I should really start getting ready for my shift as well.” He inclined his head towards the others. “You two take care.”

“You, too, Nick,” Sybil answered. As Valentine left, he overheard her saying to Deacon, “Did you want to go ahead and go over the training recommendations now?”

“Absolutely!” answered Deacon. Heck, he even sounded eager.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	3. Way to Roundworld * Fresh Air * Threads

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [Fucking Bullshit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDEOqR9--qQ&list=PLLEELrwJ-FypBYywOM81WCHmM4rOjKam0&index=6&t=0s) by Galatic Mermaid and [100%](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfJPZnGbde4&list=PLLEELrwJ-FypBYywOM81WCHmM4rOjKam0&index=6) by Angelspit. 
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic. Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_Way to Roundworld * Fresh Air * Threads_

It had taken a little less than a day for them to get together the furniture they needed, and so the group of former Companions were once more gathered into one of the corners of the High Energy Building. Old Longfellow was not among them, perhaps deciding that he wasn’t needed for what was merely a ‘proof of theory’ test run. Given their history, DiMA could not say he regretted the old hunter’s absence.

His brother was examining the furniture carefully with a suspicious frown on his lips and optics slightly narrowed. He turned that expression of suspicion on the former Railroad agent, Deacon. “I know this furniture, and not because it’s from the Vimes family attic,” he observed. “Isn’t this _your_ furniture, Deacon?”

Deacon grinned and shrugged. “Hey, hers was quality stuff. Why let it go to waste? Besides, she gave it over to replace my old stuff, anyway. We’re just getting _when_ my stuff gets destroyed a _bit_ out of order, that’s all.” 

DiMA wasn’t quite sure what the source of the debate was, but if she (Sybil, DiMA inferred) had indeed given Deacon furniture to replace destroyed furniture, the former spy’s reasoning made a sort of sense.

"How did you even get all that stuff down there, anyway?” Nick asked Deacon. “Or this stuff back up here, for that matter?" 

"Strapped them together and floated them along the tunnels like a raft." Deacon answered.

"See,” Nick replied, scowling, “I know for a fact that most of those tunnels don't have water deep enough for that, but I'm going to just accept your answer because I suspect it's less ridiculous than the truth."

Deacon grinned. "Good call." 

DiMA, for his part, wondered if that was really the case. Wasn’t there a sort of tradition in enlisting one’s coworkers to help with moving furniture? And weren’t Deacon’s coworkers Golems? Of course, a Free Golem did place value on their work and was unlikely to accept the traditional payment of beer for such services, but that was a trivial issue to overcome.

DiMA studied Deacon a moment longer. His training as a wizard included training in seeing what was in front of him. One of the things he saw was that wizards rarely applied their training in seeing quite as consistently as they claimed to. But at the moment, one of the other things he saw was that Deacon was a little less… there than he had been during his visit the day before. DiMA wasn’t sure what to make of that, so instead he just tucked that observation away for later consideration.

“As gripping as this discussion of moving techniques is,” John Hancock said, in a tone suggesting that he was bored, “isn’t it time we got this show on the road?”

Piper Wright turned to address DiMA. “Right. So do you need to, I don’t know, go get the… universe or something?” Something about her tone suggested she couldn’t quite believe that the question she was asking was one that she needed to ask in seriousness.

DiMA shook his head and smiled faintly. “That won’t be necessary,” he began. “Roundworld isn’t actually a single world but an entire other universe. As a result, even though from the outside, it’s in a nearby office, any given point on the inside is always infinitely far from here. As a result, the physical coordinates of Roundworld’s external existence aren’t really important when entering or exiting it.” 

Piper frowned and looked a little confused, but she accepted the explanation and even jotted a few notes in her notebook to ensure she could get the phrasing correct later.

“Sounds like we’re ready, then,” Preston Garvey observed. “Just need to decide which of us are going.”

“Well, I’m going,” Hancock pushed himself away from the wall he’d been leaning against. “It’s been a bit too long since I’ve been able to use one of my favorite swears.”

Piper smirked and glanced over at the ghoul. “Suffering withdrawal, Hancock?”

“There are some things even addictol can’t help,” Hancock grinned.

“I’d like to go,” Deacon smirked. “After all, if we’re turning my old furniture into anyone, it should be me, right?”

“Hey, count me in!” Piper said, excited. “A whole other _universe_? That’s an incredible story!”

“You may want to check your paper’s archives,” DiMA cautioned. “Last year, not long before we began to exist, in fact, there was a very public trial involving custody of the Roundworld. Your supervisors may regard talk of the universe as ‘old news’.”

The reporter made an exasperated noise as she dropped her hands to the side, still holding pencil and notebook in them, and just looked up at the ceiling. “Are you _serious?”_ she asked. “Ugh! How are these people so _jaded_ about _everything?_ We’ve got a regular column on _funny looking vegetables,_ but another universe is ‘old news’?” She lifted her hands up and curled her fingers to emphasize the quotes around "old news".

“Can you even write about this?” Nick looked thoughtful. “I mean, has anyone tried to just… write the word?” That was… a very good question. 

Piper lifted her notebook and wrote in it. Then she scowled and started writing again. She paused, the frown grew deeper, and her pencil movements became more forceful as she tried a third time. She scribbled frantically. She growled and scribbled once more. Finally just just exclaimed, “UGH!” and held the notebook up for everyone to see.

That was _fascinating._

DiMA could hear Hancock chuckling, and Deacon seemed to swallow a quick chuckle. Hancock grinned. “I guess that answers that.”

“Personally, I think our honest to goodness Minuteman should come along,” Deacon suggested.

Preston Garvey frowned at Deacon, perhaps surprised to have been singled out. “Me?”

“Sure!” answered Deacon. “You seem to be the most affected, right? So if you can say it there, we _know_ we’re playing by a different set of rules! Besides, if _I_ come back and tell everyone, ‘sure, we can drop the f-bomb on that world,’ for some reason there might be some among you who may doubt my sincerity. Since you’re probably one of the most sincere individuals to ever walk this grand dinner-plate we call the Disc, I’m volunteering you to back me up!”

“I mean, you’re not wrong about me being the most affected,” Garvey admitted, thinking over what Deacon had said. Then he shrugged. “I don’t mind going. But if we have any choice about what gets turned into us when we get back, I’m calling dibs on the table.”

“You don’t,” DiMA said. He wasn’t being entirely honest. With a trivial amount of extra work, Hex _could_ specify what bits of matter were used for which person. However, DiMA had spent the whole morning listening to his fellow students debating the proper alternate way to say seven and one, and he was in no mood to listen to anyone argue about who got to be the table. There were limits even to DiMA’s patience. 

“So how does this work?” asked Preston Garvey.

DiMA gestured towards a circle that he had chalked into the floor earlier. “You step into the circle, and Hex will cast the appropriate transport spells. Once there, Hex will continue to monitor your status and can relay your voices back to the rest of us. After a few moments, Hex will retrieve you. Remember: we don’t want you there long enough to risk derailing their current timeline, just enough to verify that our… condition is limited to this reality.”

“And not, like, any extra realities you guys happen to keep lying around,” added Piper. She sounded amused.

“Correct,” DiMA agreed.

“Here goes nothing…” Garvey said as he stepped into the circle. Hancock followed right behind, and then Deacon entered. There was no dramatic transition. No flash of light, no loud noise. One second the three were there, and the next they were gone.

* * *

The three appeared on a gentle incline in a forest, one greener and more lush than anything Hancock had ever seen. Never mind the Commonwealth, even the few parks of Ankh-Morpork had to struggle against the soot from coal fires and the general haze of the city that filtered its sunlight. Here, the sunlight was still partially obscured, but only by the trees themselves. The air smelled different, too, but he put that observation aside to focus on why they were there.

He threw back his head and yelled, “ _ **FUCK!”**_ as loud as he could. The noise seemed to send a nearby flock of birds into the strangely blue sky, and he could hear a small animal in the nearby undergrowth scrambling away. He turned towards Preston and Deacon, a broad grin on his face. “Well, I suppose that answers _that._ ”

Preston smiled faintly in amusement, then tilted his head and looked up at the leaf cover, like he was looking for something to speak into. Out loud, he asked, “Uhm… can you guys hear us?”

“We can hear you, Preston,” DiMA’s voice seemed to float out from a nearby bush. Since the other two also reacted to it, Hancock assumed he wasn’t just imagining it. “Go ahead.”

Deacon grinned impishly, and prompted Preston, “Go ahead, Garvey, say ‘fuck’.”

Preston shrugged and just said, “Fuck.” No passion there at all. A moment later, he asked, “Did you guys hear that?”

This time the bush spoke in Piper’s voice. “We can hear most of what you’re saying, but some of it’s coming back garbled.”

“Lemmee guess,” Hancock said. “Fuck.”

Nick’s voice said, “That time I heard Hancock say, ‘let me guess’ and then a loud beeping noise.”

Deacon snickered for a few moments, then he got serious. He turned back towards Preston. “Maybe we should try a few other swear words. Preston, mind checking if you’re still producing audible asterisk?”

Poor Preston actually looked faintly embarrassed over the attention paid to his swearing abilities. “Uhm. Fuck, damn, god damnit, bastard, son of a bitch…”

Hancock sighed. “They could definitely manage ‘bitch’ already.” He scowled and absently played with one of his rings. “All it takes is about five minutes in Biers before you get sick of hearing some asshole who thinks he’s being oh-so-clever every time he calls a werewolf woman that one.”

“Oh, yeah,” Preston continued after Hancock’s interruption. “Asshole. I forgot about that one.”

“We got most of that,” the bush said in Piper’s voice. “Even the words that were giving Preston trouble before, just not the f-word.”

Deacon rubbed his chin and narrowed his eyes behind his round sunglasses. “So it’s definitely a case of different world, different rules.”

The bush said in Nick’s voice, “Pretty strange thing to make some sort of… universal law over.”

“Agreed,” the bush answered itself, now in DiMA’s voice. “But this gives us, or at least me, a better starting point for further research.”

Then Piper’s voice asked, “Why just you? We’re all in on this!” 

If Hancock was going to have to stand around listening to trees arguing with themselves, he wished he had at least taken something to justify it.

“Because the next step in trying to find a word that can’t be found is to check the library,” DiMA’s voice explained, “and the sections of it that I’ll need to investigate are not open to the public.”

Piper weedled, “Ah, c’mon, DiMA! I’ve been trying to get in there for ages!”

Deacon shook his head. “From what I hear, the non-public areas of that library are pretty much the Glowing Sea of thaumic radiation.” 

That was interesting. Regular old atomic radiation didn’t hold much fear for Hancock, but thaumic radiation… nah, he wasn’t afraid of that, either, but he was at least prepared for the idea that it might actually be dangerous to him.

“If that’s the case,” Nick began, “I’m not sure I like the sound of you venturing in there alone, DiMA.”

DiMA’s voice answered, “I’ve done it before, quite successfully. Do not worry for me, brother. I’m thoroughly familiar with the standard precautions for a library search.”

Hancock chuckled at all the fussing. “To think, we come here from an irradiated, mutant-filled wasteland and everyone’s worried about a trip to the library.”

“That’s because all _we_ had to worry about in ours were super-mutants,” answered Deacon with a shrug. 

Granted, Hancock kind of _got_ that. But it was still pretty funny.

Preston explained soberly. “High magic zones are no laughing matter.” 

Killjoy. Just because they were dangerous didn’t make them not funny! 

But then even Preston seemed to reconsider what he had said, because he added, “At least not while you’re in the middle of dealing with one. I gotta admit, once the danger is past, some of them do make pretty funny stories.”

“Hex should have you out shortly,” DiMA explained, “although it may be a minute or two of your subjective time.”

Hancock nodded and took a deep breath. Oh, yeah, that. “Y’know, I’ve been meaning to ask, but... what _is_ that smell? Never smelled anything quite like it.”

“That, Mayor Hancock, is fresh air!” Preston grinned, clearly delighted. “You guys really need to get out of the city!”

From his current angle, Hancock could just barely see the twitch that suggested that Deacon was rolling his eyes behind his sunglasses. “I’ve _been_ out of the city. So do you mean Rimwards, where Mister Harry King has his sprawling shit-processing facilities? Or… literally any other direction, where it’s just miles and miles of cabbage farms?”

Preston just laughed. “Point taken. Maybe… farther out of the city.”

And then the greenery vanished, and they were once more in the chalk circle in the High Energy Magic building.

* * *

DiMA had taken all the standard precautions, which mostly consisted of letting his fellow students know he was going into the library and grabbing a few balls of yarn to mark his trail. If something happened, sooner or later the other wizards would try to get help, possibly the next time they needed something from him. There was a small outside chance that one of them might think to do so on their own and then make up a cover story of needing something from him in order to justify their concern. 

He’d also left his staff behind. Given the high levels of background magic in the library, using his staff would be very risky, akin to dropping a lit match into a tank of gasoline or one of the more combustible regions of the Ankh.

He had a pretty good idea of what he was looking for. When what you needed to find was a missing word, one type of book stood above the rest. Unfortunately, it was in one of the more deeply magical areas of the library. At least it wasn’t locked down in the sub-basements. Those basements and locks weren’t to protect the books, but to protect the world from the books, and this particular book didn’t have the same sort of aggressive magic to it that some of the others had. 

DiMA had been in the library for quite awhile, laying the trail of yarn behind him. At one point, he had the distinct impression that he had turned in two directions at the same time, and occasionally he caught the impression of another him just outside the edge of his vision. Fortunately, he was nearing his destination.

He carefully approached the shelf, pushing aside an encyclopedia that nipped at his metal fingers, and carefully slid the book he’d been looking for away from the others. Then he heard several identical voices say, “You are not authorized to access that text.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The vintage newspaper headline used in this chapter was found through the [Yesterday’s Print](https://yesterdaysprint.tumblr.com/post/189192540283/yesterdaysprint-des-moines-tribune-iowa%22) Tumblr.
> 
> **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	4. Obvious Mark * Impersonating A Wizard * Second Sight, First Mistake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [Fuck You Very Much](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Bv7WIygitU&list=PLLEELrwJ-FypBYywOM81WCHmM4rOjKam0&index=7) by Lily Allen and [Y’All Want a Single](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyFlW_bOg-Q&list=PLLEELrwJ-FypBYywOM81WCHmM4rOjKam0&index=8) by Korn. 
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic. Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_Obvious Mark * Impersonating A Wizard * Second Sight, First Mistake_

They still hadn’t heard back from DiMA, so for the moment there was little else to do but wait. Besides, ‘look things up in the Library’ was exactly the mindset Deacon needed the others to be in, so he could be patient and give their thoughts some time to develop. No, really. He could.

Not that he lacked for things to keep himself occupied. For one thing, he had a day job, which was a strange concept in and of itself. Not that he was expected to keep anything like regular hours for that “day job”, to the point where it was often not so much a day job but an evening or even night job. Most of his job either involved gathering information on any not-yet-freed golems out there or blending into the background so he could keep an eye on how Trust golems were treated, so… despite the paycheck and desk and occasional expectation that he dress in “office-appropriate attire”, in some ways, it wasn’t that much different from his old, fictional job. In other ways… well, this time it wasn’t a bunch of would-be human saviors deciding what was best for some poor, enslaved synths. Here, it was the golems who ultimately called the shots, who made the decisions about their own fate, and who did most of the actual work. Humans were only used at all because the golems recognized that in a human-dominated city like Ankh-Morpork, there were some jobs that you just couldn’t do as a golem. 

Coincidentally, a lot of those jobs involved “blending in.”

And so the liar went from being a Railroad Agent to a Trust Agent. Officially, the job title was, “Golem Trust Agent,” but the fact that his official title could be legitimately shortened to “Trust Agent” delighted him.

At the moment, Deacon wasn’t on the job. Some months back, he had let Captain Carrot of the Watch talk him into helping with one of Carrot’s youth programs. These programs had all more or less been combined with the Ankh-Morpork Scouting and Urban Survival Federation, but Deacon still wasn’t entirely sure who was supposed to be teaching whom about Urban Survival with this particular group of kids. For some reason he kept going, anyway, and so there he was, out at Mutton Field helping to referee a football game.

Deacon knew enough about the kid gangs in the nearby Shades to realize that the task he was assigned _should_ have had all the survivability of trying to referee a turf war between a raider gang and a super mutant tribe, but Carrot was there so it somehow worked out. At the moment, the two teams were gathering up the piles of weapons that had served as goals, and the losing team was giving him the sort of looks that made him suspect it was nearing time for a face update, Carrot or no Carrot.

While the kids were picking up their armaments, Deacon made notes in a document he was putting together for the Trust. Because golems were animated by words, they had a bad tendency to believe whatever they read. So Dorfl, a golem who had found his own words, had asked Deacon to find the right words to teach golems to think critically about the words they read. Words like, “You can’t trust everyone.”

Even as he was taking notes, he didn’t let his guard down, because these were absolutely children that you did not let your guard down around, but the kid who had sidled up to him still managed to grab something from his inventory before he clamped his hand around the smaller wrist.

“That’s… pretty impressive, actually,” Deacon admitted as he pulled one of his old Stealth Boys from the child’s hand. 

Rockland Irons, a name that Deacon suspected the boy hadn’t been born with, just asked, “How’d you even fit that in your pocket?”

“Relaxed fit pants,” Deacon answered automatically, slipping the device back in his inventory. “Seems you’ve been hanging around more than usual, Rockland.”

Rockland just shrugged and said, “Don’t see why I shouldn’t, what with such an obvious mark sitting over here and all.” He glanced hubward. “Starting to get dark. You’re up in the Unreal Estate, right? You’re gonna want a link-boy for that trip.”

Deacon grinned and put his notebook into his jacket, using a normal pocket this time. “What, right after you tried to pick my pocket and called me an ‘obvious mark’?”

The boy grinned back. “Better pay up front to be safe, then.”

“What’s the fee?”

“Tuppenny,” answered Rockland. 

Deacon was pretty sure that the usual link-boy rate was half that, but given that the eight-year-old3 was a member of the Unpleasant Sweethearts, a gang based out of Sweetheart Lane, one of the Shades’ shadier routes, it made sense that he commanded a higher-than-usual price. “Sounds like a deal.” 

Once the field was picked up to Carrot’s satisfaction, he announced, “Remember, Thursday we’ll be having a course in knot-escaping-”

“Not escaping what?” asked one of the boys. Deacon was pretty sure he was called something like “Mad-eyed Mike.” 

“Knot-escaping. Escaping knots,” Deacon corrected. Carrot had tapped him to help with that one as well. He had to admit that the subject was more interesting than soccer. Several of the boys glared at him over the interjection, but he pretended not to notice.

“That’s right!” Carrot agreed cheerfully. “Now before we go…”

The children shuffled with embarrassment, then raised index fingers to the level of their ears and said, “Wib wib wib.”

“Wob wob wob,” Carrot boomed in reply.

Deacon neither wibbed nor wobbed. He was tempted to, which he found worrying, but he chose to practice resisting Carrot by not participating in the group’s little good-bye ritual. After all, if he couldn’t resist something as ridiculous as a wib or a wob, what hope did he have of disobeying the ridiculously charismatic Watch Captain over anything important?

Rockland nudged Deacon’s ankle with his foot. “Y’coming?” 

Deacon fished into his pocket for a couple of pennies and handed them over. “Lead the way.” The shortest route to the Unreal Estates went straight through the Shades, and while Deacon was confident in his ability to navigate that turf unharmed4, Rockland seemed to want to actually spend time with him, which was… kind of cute, really.

As they walked, Rockland chattered. “You’re lucky I’m here. Folks around the Unreal Estates, they’re soft.” He paused. “Well, okay, they get more’n their share magic-leak weirdness, but just people’s more dangerous than magic, and the gangs up there’re rubbish. Y’can tell by their names.”

“Yeah?” Deacon prompted, grinning.

“Yeah. Y’know, the Sator Square Sharks, the Deadly Sins, the Broad Marsh Fire Ants… any gang that’s gotta give itself a tough name to sound scary ain’t that scary on its own.” 

Deacon thought about the “University Point Deathclaws”. Granted, he wasn’t sure if he was ever supposed to have really been in a gang by that name, or if the name was a stand-in for a gang he really was supposed to have been in, or if he was supposed to have made up the story whole-cloth, but he did know that either Hex had plucked the name out of the void or a wizard had come up with it. Whether it had been Hex or a wizard, the closest examples of street gangs would have been the ones around Unreal University. 

“Onna other hand, at least the Fire Ants have actual trained fire ants as mascots,” Rockland continued thoughtfully.

“Y’know, I once ran into a nest of those,” Deacon said absently. “Took some pretty bad burns getting out of there, and I was lucky that was all it was.”

“Yeah? Where’d y’find them?”

Deacon bit down the urge to answer “Grayditch,” and instead said, “Ossy Walk.” He wasn’t even sure why he’d said that. His mess of memories suggested that there had been giant fire-breathing ants in Grayditch in the Capital Wasteland, and whether he had encountered them or not, no one would be able to call him on it. But the Capital Wasteland didn’t exist. Luckily, there were also giant, fire-breathing ants over near Broad Marsh, which did exist, so it was an easy enough lie to recover from. 

“Yeah, I hear the Guild of Pest Controllers for Pests Who Aren’t Rats keeps trying to clear out their nests, but they keep coming back,” Rockland observed. “Always wondered why that wasn’t a wizard problem, myself.”

Deacon snorted. “Maybe it is and they just haven’t gotten to it yet, but wizards solve their problems by throwing magic at them, and if you throw magic at a magic problem, you just end up with a bigger magic problem.”

Rockland barked a laugh. “Yeah, that sounds like the sort of thing an Unreal Estater would say.”

Deacon wondered about that. He wasn’t exactly a native of the Wizards’ Quarter5. He had only picked the neighborhood’s accent because the presence of the University meant that area got enough out-of-city traffic that no one questioned it if he ever screwed up a bit. If his attitude towards magic matched the locals’, it was just because he was a born - well, made - a cynic, and it didn’t take much observation to see what sort of chaos the high concentration of magic caused. What it did to the animals was at least as wild as any of the mutations he remembered from his icono-game history, and atomic radiation, unlike thaumic radiation, practically never resulted in buildings getting up and walking away. People often stayed neighbors of the University as long as they could handle it because it was cheap, but it was cheap because the area was too ridiculous for most people to handle for long.

His musing was interrupted by a scream. Deacon jerked his head towards the source of the sound and began to walk swiftly in that direction, letting himself fade into the background as he did. 

“Hey! Where d’you think you’re going?” Rockland demanded, striding after him. Deacon allowed himself a grin despite the situation. These days he usually had to put effort into being seen, and when he was actively focusing on blending in, not many seemed to spot him, but Rockland had noticed him heading off.

“Just checking it out,” Deacon answered.

“It ain’t our business,” the child hissed. 

The two found a huddle of children that appeared in the process of kicking and hitting another young boy, who was curled up, hands covering his head, and crying. Deacon was fairly certain he recognized several of the boys. “Wait a minute, shouldn’t they have been at the game?” he asked Rockland quietly. 

Rockland rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that’s Half Pint Paul and his pals. They’ve been skipping lately.”

“They’re part of your crew,” Deacon accused.

“What, like I’m their boss?” Rockland snorted, and then sighed as it became obvious he wasn’t going to get Deacon to just drop it. Rockland pointed at him. “Your fee just doubled.” Rockland then stormed up to the others. “Hey, hey, what the h*lls?” Then the kid snapped his mouth shut and opened his eyes wide, confused. 

The other boys looked up at the interruption, likewise confused. “What did you just say?” one asked. 

Another, Half-a-Brick-Inna-Sock Saul, sneered, “Been spending too much time at Carrot’s little sing-alongs, huh?”

By this time, Rockland seemed to have recovered and waved it off. “That ain’t the point. The point is why’re you here kicking up one of King’s lads? You know how he comes down on anyone who messes with what’s his!”

“But I’m not-” the boy on the ground started to protest, until Rockland’s foot impacted his side, cutting him off.

“Wait, are you serious?” asked Paul, surprised and a little worried.

“‘Course I’m serious! What, can’t tell by the smell?” Rockland protested angrily.

“I don’t sm-” started the boy on the ground, until another kick shut him up.

Medium Boy McCoy laughed. “You’re right there, Rock, guess he does stink.” Then he looked a little uncomfortable. “Look, you don’t think he-”

Rockland rolled his eyes. “All I’m saying is, I’d get out of here before he can figure out a solid description. I’ll take care of it, yeah?”

The other boys started to scatter, and Paul nodded. “All right, Rock. Thanks! You’re a pal!” before scampering off as well.

“Uhm… thank you?” the kid on the ground offered hesitantly.

Rockland grabbed his arm and yanked him upright as best he could, given that the other kid was a fair bit taller than he was. “Just get up, idiot,” he snarled. 

“Hey,” Deacon started, stepping towards the two boys. The one they’d just rescued jumped in surprise, but Deacon pretended not to notice. “Listen, Rockland, if you get him where he needs to go, I’ll cover his fee.”

Rockland glared at Deacon. “D*mned straight you will!” he hissed, then blinked. 

It worried Deacon that the problem was starting to include more words, and more people, but it wasn’t anything they were going to solve here on the street. He looked at the kid. “Hey, kid, where you heading, anyway? And what should we call you?”

“I’m… uhm… I’m over on Treacle Mine. Name’s Mac the Spoon.” 

Rockland rolled his eyes at the name.

“All right. Well, let’s get you home,” Deacon said.

The three started walking, Rockland falling into a sullen silence until they reached Treacle Mine Road. Once they were there, Mac said nervously, “I, uhm… I can get home from here, no problem.”

“Y’know Treacle Hat Gang’re just a bunch of cowards,” Rockland said. “Even if you’d made it through their little initiation, they wouldn’t come back you up. ‘Specially not on our turf.”

Mac started to stutter, and Rockland gave an exasperated sigh. He held up a locket. “Got this from your pocket. They had you nick it off Half-Pint Paul, right?” 

Mac began patting his pockets. “Hey, that’s-”

“Not yours,” Rockland interrupted. “I’m giving it back, and if you’re not an idiot, you’ll drop it and walk away. Now get.”

The other child hurried off and Rockland glared up at Deacon. Deacon shrugged back at him. “So he stole from them. Shouldn’t be worth a beating.”

Rockland snorted. “Worth a lot more if the wrong person finds out. Y’heard of the Thieves’ Guild, right? That idiot wouldn’t be any good at hiding from _them_ , maybe getting his arse beat by the Sweethearts woulda put a stop before it got that far.”

Deacon smirked. “So have _you_ learned _your_ lesson, yet?”

Rockland rolled his eyes as the two started walking once more. “I’m a lot better at it than that idiot. ‘Sides, I’m always learning. Every day’s a lesson when you’re destined for greatness.”

3 At least, that was Deacon’s best guess of Rockland’s age. The boy typically claimed to be anywhere from eight to twelve depending on his mood when you asked, and Deacon suspected that Rockland wasn’t entirely sure himself.

4 He’d usually just pop underground at the first opportunity and stay that way until he neared Pons Bridge. He still didn’t feel too comfortable with all this, “walking around in the open” thing that people did, although to be fair, most of the tight alleys of the Shades didn’t qualify as “the open”.

5 Or maybe he was, what with having been created by Hex in the middle of Unseen University.

* * *

It had been four days since the Roundworld experiment, and people were starting to get a bit antsy waiting on word from DiMA. Both Old Longfellow and Preston Garvey had warned everyone that morning that they’d have to be leaving in a couple of days. Nick Valentine, for his part, was nearing the end of his shift and was considering checking in on his brother once it ended. In the meantime, he had some reports to finish up with the help of his shift patrol partner, the talking rat named Artificial Flavours. Flavours, being too small to handle a pen, left the writing to Valentine. Instead, the rat gnawed on a piece of newspaper and offered the occasional suggestion or correction. On the one hand, Artificial Flavours was more literate than the average Morporkian and, thanks to his keen nose and ears, occasionally caught details at a scene that even Valentine himself had missed, but on the other hand, the rat had an annoying habit of arguing with him over how many u’s belonged in the word rumor.

They were just wrapping up when Norman Thybaut, a twitchy young man who’d only recently made Constable and who had been working the front desk that day, approached while followed by Zinon, the Ephebian student wizard who worked with DiMA. Valentine had the sinking feeling that he knew what Zinon was there about, but he waited for Thybaut to clear his voice nervously before he looked up to deal with it.

“Constable Valentine?” asked Thybaut.

Valentine frowned up at the pair. “Yes?”

Thybaut nods towards Zinon. “This, uhm, Ziman-”

“Zinon,” the wizard corrected, scowling.

“Zinon!” Thybaut repeated, as if afraid of upsetting the wizard. In fairness, that fear might be justified. “Zinon! He’s, uhm, here to see you. Says it’s about your brother.”

Valentine sighed and leaned back in his seat. “All right, Zinon, out with it.”

“I’ve gotta get back to the desk,” Thybaut muttered quickly before hurrying back to the front. 

Zinon ignored the departing Watchman and explained, “Er. Your brother hasn’t returned the loaner yarn yet.”

“The… loaner yarn?” Valentine prompted.

Artificial Flavours peered up from the newspaper that he was devouring in both a metaphorical and literal sense. “Did he eat it?” he asked.

Valentine covered his face with his metal hand. From the rat’s perspective, it was a valid question, but… 

“I… doubt it?” Zinon answered, thrown off by the question. “He doesn’t eat. Or drink for that matter.”

Valentine lowered his hand. “Maybe you’d better start from the beginning. What is loaner yarn?”

“Oh,” Zinon began, realizing he hadn’t explained that bit. “See, we keep extra balls of yarn around for unwinding while in the library. The library layout can shift unpredictably, and unwinding balls of yarn is one way of finding your way back. It’s more effective than you’d think, what with all the narrative force behind it.”

Valentine asked, “And when did he borrow it?”

“About three days ago.” replied Zinon.

So the day after their meeting. Valentine got a sinking feeling in his tank as he asked a question that he already knew the answer to. “Do you know _why_ he hasn’t returned it?”

“Probably because he hasn’t come back from the library yet,” answered Zinon.

Valentine slammed his hands down on his desk as he stood up, the action making Flavours jump a little. “My brother’s been missing for _three days_ and you lead off with missing yarn?”

Zinon looked embarrassed. Valentine studied his expression and found himself suspecting that Zinon had been worried about DiMA but just didn’t know how to begin the conversation in a way that wasn’t inherently selfish. The wizard looked down at his feet while he shuffled them. “There is that, too.”

Valentine scrubbed his face with his synthflesh hand and sighed. “I’m pretty sure I remember hearing that the general public isn’t allowed in that section of the library. So how come you haven’t gone? _You’re_ the wizard, Zinon.”

“Yes, but you see,” sputtered Zinon, “there’s an awful lot of words in there-”

“In the library?” asked Flavours, voice dripping with faux innocence. “You don’t say!”

Zinon continued on as if he hadn’t heard the rat, “ - and in places like that, even more so than everywhere else, it’s a good idea to pay attention to narrative convention. And a brother searching for missing family has a lot more force to it than a graduate student wizard looking for yarn! Or, erm, the other student wizard.” 

Valentine sat back down heavily with an exasperated sigh. He never had been really comfortable with all that “narrativium” nonsense. “Well if it’s ‘for the story’ or whatever nonsense, will I be let in to go find him?”

“Probably not,” Zinon answered, cringing a little as he said it. “It wouldn’t be a very good story if it were easy. But maybe I can figure out a way to help you sneak in.”

Flavorus chewed thoughtfully on his bite of newspaper, swallowed, and then asked, “Do you need me to come along, Nick? Everyone knows that friendly animal companions are good luck in this sort of story!”

Valentine grinned at the rat’s offer, and chuckled. “Er, thanks for the offer, Flavors, but I think I’ve got plenty of help as it is. Seems there’s quite a cast of characters mixed up in this little ‘story’ already.”

* * *

Old Longfellow had spent the morning hunting ducks on the University grounds with Archchancellor Ridcully, who had invited him to do so during a conversation at the Cap- er, Commander and Valentine’s wedding. Old Longfellow had his own crossbow, purchased back in Fourecks to replace the rifle that Captain Carrot had destroyed, and the two had had a grand old time shooting down birds while splitting a bottle of Bearhugger’s. Seemed Mustrum had a pack of hunting dragons, which struck Longfellow as a bit odd. Sort of like sending out a land mine to retrieve your kill. But only one of the little buggers had exploded, and by then they were nearly done with the bottle, so neither man had been particularly bothered.

He had just parted ways with the wizard when the Commonwealth mainlanders found him and dragged him back off to the High Energy Magic building for more of that swearing nonsense. From the sound of things, that Acadia synth might have gone and gotten himself in some trouble. Old Longfellow didn’t much care one way or another about that, but he was feeling pretty mellow after the morning he’d had and had to admit to some curiosity over the whole swearing business, so he ambled along after them. 

They met up with the increasingly familiar group of student wizards in the same room as that big ant computer with the Brahmin skull on it, and one of the wizards had dumped a large number of grubby robes and pointed hats in front of them. Apparently the “grand plan” was just to disguise themselves as wizards and head into the Library after the synth. Old Longfellow reckoned he could blend in with the wizards pretty well, even if he did lack the usual belly, but he had his doubts about the others. 

Turned out he wasn’t the only one, so Sunglasses tried to reassure them. “It’s not hard. You throw on a robe and a pointy hat and people just assume you’re a wizard.”

Sunglasses didn’t have the same face, accent, or even same sunglasses as the man they’d arrived with, but both the Commander and Valentine had assured him that it was the same man, and they were both more honest than Sunglasses himself. Besides, the voice, at least, matched, so Old Longfellow believed them.

“Don’t they have to worry about impersonators?” asked the ex-Minuteman, the only one of the group who had bothered to go out and see what the world beyond the city walls was like. “Some of the areas I’ve been through are still rough enough that they’ll pay a wizard to come along, if they can find one. You’d think someone would try to take advantage of that.”

The grubby little red-haired wizard - wasn’t his name Alf? - frowned at Sunglasses. “It’s not a problem because the punishment for impersonating a wizard is being nailed upside down to one of the supports of the Brass Bridge for two high tides and then a beheading.”

“Well it’s a good thing that none of us have ever done that, then, isn’t it?” Sunglasses said, giving Alf a cheerful smile. Longfellow immediately assumed that Sunglasses had at some point done exactly that.

Longfellow thought over the penalty Alf had described. Pretty harsh justice, even by Islander standards. “You guys don’t go in for halves on the penalties, do you?” he mused.

The ghoul shrugged and observed, “That would depend on if you get caught...”

“We’re right here,” scowled the grubby wizard.

Valentine gave an exasperated huff of a sigh and glared at the wizard. “Look. Do you want to get your yarn back yourselves, or what?”

The student wizards all chorused back some variant of, “No,” “That’s okay,” “We won’t mention it,” and so forth. Soft, the whole lot of ‘em.

The Agatean boy said, exasperated, “Fine, we’ll help you, but if you get caught, we had nothing to do with this, understand?” Like they weren’t doing _him_ a favor. Hmph.

“Don’t worry!” exclaimed the reporter girl as she threw back her head and rolled her eyes. “If we get caught, no one will know you’re involved!”

The ghoul leaned over and muttered to the reporter, barely loud enough for Longfollow to overhear, “So, you planning on screwing those assholes over if we get caught?”

“Tempting, but no,” the girl answered quietly, shaking her head. “A good reporter doesn’t reveal her sources.”

“Sure,” the ghoul whispered back, “but we’re talking about you.”

Longfellow snorted in amusement, and the reporter glared at both him and the ghoul. 

The Agatean boy, who didn’t seem to have noticed the ghoul and reporter arguing, looked thoughtful. “The real problem is her,” he said, pointing at the only ‘her’ in the room. “A hat and robe won’t disguise her… her… herness.”

“Thought I read you guys were taking women now?” the Minuteman kid asked as he pulled on one of the robes. 

“We are, technically,” said the wizard who looked like he was from Klatch. What was it, Chatter? He was certainly a talky one. Longfellow had always thought he looked a bit like one of the Acadia synths. “But at the moment we only have one.”6 He looked thoughtful for a moment, then added, “Who isn’t technically a woman yet.” 

The ghoul threw a robe over his frock coat. “So for once, Piper stands out more than I do?” he asked, sounding amused.

“We have quite a few post-mortem faculty,” explained the wizard that had dragged them there. Name was something that began with a Z. “They’re not usually corporeal, but it’s not unheard of to see a zombie on campus from time to time.”

“Oh, right,” muttered the ghoul to himself, still amused, “post-mortem faculty. Should have guessed.”

Sunglasses absently waved a hand as he pulled a robe on himself. “Hancock’s fine. Piper’s fine,” he assured. Then he looked at the wizards. “Trust me, you guys aren’t nearly as observant as you think you are.” 

Z-man looked a little embarrassed and admitted, “We, uhm, had an instructor that used to get me confused with DiMA.”

“See?” said Sunglasses, pointing at Z-man. “We’re fine!”

Valentine put on one of his brother’s robes and took off his own hat. He looked for a moment at it, then seemed to tuck it into a pocket. He grabbed his brother’s staff and plopped a pointed hat on his head. It wasn’t actually one of DiMA’s hats - DiMA needed a pretty specialized hat - but if a man could confuse DiMA for Z-man, Longfellow didn’t figure they needed to worry much about a detail like that. 

Valentine sighed and grumbled, “Still can’t believe that _this_ is our grand master plan. It’s like something out of an old cartoon.” Longfellow had almost forgotten the way the synth would sometimes casually mention stuff from before the war. Well. Stories from before the story war, however that worked.

“I hate to say it,” the reporter girl said as she put a hat on, “but that should work to our advantage, right? What with, uhm, ‘narrative force’ or whatever? Not that I ever got to see a cartoon, but going by the comics that survived, didn’t those stupid disguises work?” 

Valentine nodded. “Until they stopped working,” he said grimly.

Sunglasses looked through the piles of books and papers that were scattered on the tops of the desks and tables around the room. He finally found a clip board which he grabbed, an expression of satisfaction on his face.“Then we go as far as this takes us and then prepare for the chase scene. Now, just think to yourselves, ‘I belong here and nobody has any business saying I don’t,’ and c’mon.” He looked at the girl, then the ghoul, then Valentine, and added, “Most of you guys are good at that anyway.”

6 Eleven year old Rosanna Fitget, who was definitely not a witch and refused to have her geometries taken from her, was recently accepted by Dr. Hix into the Department of Post-Mortem Communications because there was no way that way a proper designated-evil wizard would turn down the chance to have a creepy little girl in his department.

* * *

It was said that even half-decent wizards see what was truly there. A grounding in reality was necessary before one could hope to manipulate it. However, to see something, one had to, at the very least, be looking at it.

Ponder Stibbons wasn’t looking at the little crowd of fake wizarding students shuffling into the Library. He was looking at Ridcully, because a Ridcully in a hallway was very difficult to ignore, sort of like the light of a train in a tunnel.

Almost exactly like, and with the same connotations.

Ponder wished he’d gotten off the tracks in time.

Wizards tended to be more psychically sensitive than most people. Trends hit them like whirlwinds. Ponder couldn’t entirely remember the music with rocks in - no one could - but he did remember the recent ferroequinology craze very keenly, which had taken even him under its spell for a time.

Something like that was happening now, as Ridcully swore, “Mr. Stibbons, what the d@mn h#lls is wrong with the acoustics here? I can’t make myself heard at all. It’s a bl00dy nuisance!”

Ridcully was, despite what he was claiming, making himself heard very well.

Ponder suggested, “I’m not sure it’s the acoustics, sir. Nothing’s editing _my_ speech patterns. You seem to have come down with the jarns, quimps, nittles, and grawlixes.”

Ridcully looked taken aback. Brooding, he inquired, “That can’t be fatal, can it?”

“No sir, it’s a rare linguistic affliction that tends to prey upon the pure of heart,” said Ponder. “Fairly harmless, all told.” Then he considered what he’d just said. So, it was one thing if a civic figure like Captain Carrot said something like _d-ng_ in a moment of annoyance, but Ridcully, pure of heart?

But Ridcully was already running with it, chugging along like a steam train at speed. “And I’m practically all heart, aren’t I?”

For a certain value of red and pulsing…

“Actually, sir, now that I mention it, we might need to examine this phenomenon more closely -” Ponder tried to say.

“I’m well known for my charity. It’s practically every day that I don’t turn someone into a toad, and there’s plenty deserving of it out there,” Ridcully continued. “Do you think there’s a medal for it, charitably not turning folks into toads what have it coming?”

“I think, if you’d just come with me towards some of my testing equipment, we could find out,” Ponder said darkly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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	5. Apes * Curses * Tangled Yarn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [Freedom of Choice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVGINIsLnqU&list=PLLEELrwJ-FypBYywOM81WCHmM4rOjKam0&index=9) by Devo and [Word Crimes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc&list=PLLEELrwJ-FypBYywOM81WCHmM4rOjKam0&index=10) by "Weird Al" Yankovic. 
> 
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_Apes * Curses * Tangled Yarn_

It was late enough in the library that those students who were still capable of finding the exits had already done so, meaning that the always hushed noises have been reduced to the susurration of pages straining against their bindings, the clinks of chains as grimoires attempted futile escapes, and the occasional distant howl of the wild thesaurus packs. The Librarian looked upon his domain and found it good.

The Librarian was, like all faculty members, a wizard. He was also, like most faculty members, an ape, although he was of a somewhat hairier variety. The orange orangutan had just finished a quick check of the nearer shelves, and was now at his desk tending to the day’s returned books. Unfortunately, the rest of the staff insisted that students be occasionally allowed to borrow books, so it fell to the Librarian to welcome his lost children home, make sure they were properly cared for, and to mourn the occasional but inevitable coffee ring in a text.

Several of the nearer books began rustling and clinking louder than usual. The Librarian frowned, carefully closed the book he had just finished checking in, and started to get out of his chair. It was then he noticed that two bananas and a bowl of salted peanuts were sitting next to the books on his desk. He knew for a fact that he hadn’t put them there, and he hadn’t seen anyone… else… wait.

He had seen someone there that he hadn’t noticed. Someone almost there, at least. Someone who seemed to be straddling the line between real and fictional. 

Granted, beings that straddled that line were common enough in the Library of Unseen University, a place where that line was not only thin, but often blurred, clouded, tangled, fudged, boiled, and fricasseed. The wrong type of intrusion could spell trouble (and when the thesauruses were around, it could spell a great many other words as well), but minor border crossings were frequent and no real cause for alarm. His books, at least, didn’t seem very upset. It was more as if they were welcoming home something that belonged, or at least almost belonged, in this place.

The Librarian sat back down and began unpeeling one of the bananas. He broke off the end and popped it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully, and decided to let the matter go for the moment. If some piece of near-fiction wanted to present him with snacks, who was he to argue?

* * *

As Deacon made his way back to the others he didn’t always stay right next to the yarn that snaked its way across the floor, but he didn’t let it out of his sight, either. The underground temple where he was squatting was near enough the University that he was getting pretty good at navigating magically warped environments, but the tunnels near his home didn’t have anything on the Library, a place that stored magic books so potent that many had to be chained to their shelves, and that was in the tamer sections. 

“Did he see us?” Piper asked in a near-whisper as Deacon approached close enough to hear her.

He shrugged. “If he did, he decided he’s got other priorities at the moment.”

Valentine studied Deacon as the group began moving again, his optics narrowed suspiciously. “Uh-huh. And I suppose you wouldn’t have anything to do with that?”

Deacon gave the detective an expression of what would have been convincing innocence to anyone who didn’t know Deacon very well. “I have no idea what you’re trying to imply, Mister Valentine.”

Hancock, who was a few paces ahead of the others, found himself jumping away from the shelves he was next to as one of the grimoires surged towards him, snapping razor sharp teeth that belonged in no book, until its chains jerked it back. He scowled at the snarling book for a moment and then shook his head. “I keep having to remind myself that this isn’t just a particularly wild flashback hallucination. Maybe I should have gone in for a sip of that coffee before coming in, after all.”

Longfellow snorted and pulled a metal flask from beneath his robe. “Y’ask me, _more_ sober’s the wrong direction to be moving in here.”

Hancock grinned at the Islander. “You make an excellent argument. Don’t suppose I can persuade you to share?”

Longfellow took a swig from his flask and then handed it over to Hancock. “Help yourself, long as you’re buying tomorrow.”

“You got it, brother.” Hancock took a drink and handed back the flask. “Don’t suppose you’ve done the Bearhugger’s tour yet?”

“They do tours?” That wasn’t just Longfellow; Preston had overheard that bit of their quiet conversation and asked the question at the same moment that the old hunter had.

Hancock chuckled at the both of them. “Oh, yeah. With tastings. One of the best things you can get for a dollar in this town. Tell you what, once we’re done with this business, we can meet up there for their tour, on me. They even got a nice little service where if you have a bit too much, someone’ll wheelbarrel you back to wherever you need to go.”

Preston chuckled. “Well I’m not planning on having _that_ much, but you got yourself a deal.”

Deacon had to force down a chuckle. An Islander, a ghoul, and a Minuteman walk into a whiskey factory… sounded like the set up for a joke. Deacon thought he might have to get in on that just for the spectacle, even if he did have to pay his own way. 

“Piper, no!” Valentine’s hissed warning pulled Deacon out of his amused musings. The reporter had fallen behind and was drifting nearer to another of the shelves, an enraptured expression on her face. Deacon mentally kicked himself for not paying enough attention. Of _course_ Piper would be particularly vulnerable to the siren song of these magic books! She was nosey as the hells and had a strong affinity with words, and… well, okay, so did he and Nick, but she was an actual writer on top of those things.

It looked like neither Valentine nor Deacon would reach Piper in time to pull her away from the shelves, but then she was knocked to the floor by something slamming into her at about knee height: something furry, with four legs and a breed name that probably wasn’t native to the Disc, although Deacon wouldn’t be too surprised if, through cosmic coincidence, they just happened to resemble some breed of dog out from Uberwald.

“Dogm-!” Piper started to exclaim, before Valentine, who had just reached her, covered her mouth with his synthetic-skinned hand. He reminds her that they’re in the Library by holding a skeletal finger to his lips, and when he removes his hand, she hissed out, “Dogmeat?”

Valentine helped Piper stand as the others gathered near. “Is that alright?” Preston asked. “I mean, do they allow animals in here?”

“Don’t see why not,” Hancock observed. “We’re animals.”

“I’m not,” Valentine pointed out.

“No, I mean, non-h-” Preston started, then caught himself. Probably remembered the Librarian, not to mention the high number of non-humans living in the city. “Non-reading animals.”

“Well if anyone asks, he’s our reading-eye dog,” Deacon answered, then waved them on towards the yarn. “C’mon, let’s keep going.”

Deacon was pretty certain that it was only a row or two further into the library when they ran into their next obstacle, although judging both time and distance was getting difficult. The group looked down in confusion at the yarn they had been following. Up until that point, they had been following a single line of yarn. Up ahead, the string led them in two different directions. Between them was a point that was very difficult to look at, because the brain kept insisting that the yarn didn’t ‘split’, but somehow led towards both aisles at once while also leading to neither. If Deacon closed one eye and put his hand up so that he couldn’t see the leftmost aisle, he could _only_ see the yarn leading right with no split, and if he closed his other aisle and changed the position of his hand to cover the rightmost aisle he could _only_ see the one leading left, but if he looked at it all at once it just gave him a bit of a headache.

“So… which way should we go?” Preston asked the others. 

“Maybe it’s like… subway tunnels or sewers, where you just pick a wall and stick to it until you end up somewhere?” Piper suggested. 

“I think you mainlanders had a lot more subways to deal with than I was used to,” grumbled Longfellow. “Give me the forest any day.”

Hancock looked around the room, black eyes narrowed in thought. He looked up at the ceiling, then around again. “Y’know, I’m seeing plenty of shelves, but not a lot of walls. They’ve gotta be there, _something’s_ holding the ceiling, up, but…”

“I reckon we’re far enough in that directions and distances are getting pretty weird,” Nick observed. “The way the d!mned campus keeps rearranging itself and the tunnels underneath us sometimes loop back on themselves, ceilings without walls aren’t too surprising.” He added, muttering, “This place always drives my internal compass crazy. Should probably just get the d!mned thing disabled, not much use in a world without a magnetic North.”

“Or any North,” Preston observed.

“Right,” agreed Nick. “Anyway, since we happen to have the nose of the Commonwealth with us,” he gestured to Dogmeat, “why not see if he can sniff out which direction DiMA went in?” Nick crouched down next to Dogmeat and held out DiMA’s staff. “See if you can’t pick up his trail, huh, boy?”

Dogmeat snuffled at the staff in Nick’s hand, then barked in acknowledgement at the group. Deacon winced at the noise and looked around, but no one seemed to be heading their way. Dogmeat charged forward several steps, past that hard-to-look-at split, and stopped. He whimpered. He sniffed along the right thread, followed it a few feet, then came back. He passed through the split, whimpered again, sniffed along the left thread, then came back once more. He looked at the others, tilted his head, and whined in confusion.

“Dogmeat… seems to think he went both ways,” Piper inferred, confused. 

“We could split up,” suggested Longfellow.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Preston answered. There was no telling what else is out there.

“Well, if he went both ways, and we can only go one, might as well just flip a coin,” said Hancock. “If they’re both his path, either way should get us there, right?”

Valentine rubbed his torn chin thoughtfully. “His path…” he murmured. And along one leg of the Trousers of Time, he let his train of thought end there, concluding that Hancock was right, and that if DiMA went both ways, either one should lead them to him. Let us call that the right leg. But along the left leg of the Trousers of Time, he worried a bit longer at the thought of directions and paths and suggested, “You know… DiMA seems to be left handed. Opposite of me, there. It’s not much to go on, probably about as significant as a coin flip, but… why don’t we try that one first?”

The others looked at each other, but since no one else had any better suggestions, they chose the left path, much unlike the them in the right leg, who left their fates up to a coin flip instead.

* * *

There was cursing, and there was _cursing_. Sometimes they were the same thing. A wizard who put sufficient energy behind a snarled, ‘Sod off!’ could make a man’s blood turn black.

The interesting thing was that Ridcully couldn’t do either of these things. They’d gone to Modo’s garden, and so far, Ridcully had utterly failed to do anything of any consequence to the fig tree that they’d selected as their test subject.

“Rackin, rickin, rassen-frassen...” Ridcully growled.

The tree stood there.

The Lecturer in Recent Runes, having been summoned given the linguistic nature of the dilemma suggested, “Maybe you need new curse words. What’s that one that’s popular with all the whippersnappers these days? Sh--t?”

He paused.

Somehow, the censorship made that word sound _worse_ , Ponder jotted down on his clipboard. Also, it had become rapidly apparent that the censorship wasn’t solely affecting Ridcully.

The Egregious Professor of Grammar and Usage had shown up to argue with the Lecturer in Recent Runes, and he sneered, “This may be one of the rare valid uses of fiddlesticks. We may even need to break out the emergency sh-cks. Sh-cks? Gosh, it’s got me, too. Mr. Stibbons, I must protest this.”

“Research is proceeding,” Ponder said circumspectly.

“I don’t see any of you gentlemen managing so much as a malediction,” rumbled Ridcully.

Mrs. Whitlow, who appeared with a light cheese board that required four men to carry it, said in a carefully ominous voice, “Ai don’t see why you _gentlemen_ are making such a fuss over vulgarity.”

The temperature dropped 20 degrees.

* * *

The loud “crack!” of something very small breaking the speed of sound, something that sounded suspiciously like a bullet being fired, caused the entire group to throw themselves to the floor next to one of the shelves as they searched around for the source of the noise.

“That sounded like gunshot, but that can’t be right,” Preston noted just as Nick was about to point out something similar. “The Disc doesn’t have them yet, and didn’t the wizards make it so guns couldn’t get pulled through with the rest of us?”

“DiMA and Longfellow had some when we first got here,” Piper pointed out, looking around. She ducked her head as she heard another shot fire, this one sounding a bit closer.

“We did, but after the robot man disarmed us,” Longfollow nodded towards Valentine, “that tall Watch fella destroyed them.” His tone sounded a little bitter, but then it turned wistful as he added, “I miss that rifle. Crossbows just ain’t the same.”

“I think it was because they were holding the guns instead of them being in their inventories,” Valentine explained. “Something about the initial parameters for our materialization.”

“Is that why my shotgun was missing when I showed up here?” Hancock asked as he pulled a box of Mentats from his pocket and began shaking a pill into the palm of his hand. 

Valentine frowned at Hancock’s pills, but didn’t bother saying anything. Sometimes you just had to pick your battles, and there was no winning _that_ one. Instead, he just nodded and answered “That would be why, although… I don’t think it worked perfectly. Sam says the Mysterious Stranger had his.”

“The Stranger?” asked Piper. “Nicky, that’s just a legend!”

“Sure, because _that_ stops a thing from existing,” Deacon observed cheerfully, “ _especially_ in a place like this!” Then there was another shot, and Deacon slapped his hand against his left ear. “Darn i- _damn it_ , grazed me,” he removed his hand, frowning at the blood on it, and then looked around. “Where are these even coming from?”

Hancock frowned as he studied the shelf they were huddling against. He lifted his finger to touch something, then caught himself and just pointed instead. Valentine searched at where he was pointing and saw a small hole in the book. “I’m not just seeing things, am I? Looks like the _books_ are firing at us.”

Valentine frowned. “No, I see it, too.” He crept to the opposite shelf, searching for a point of impact.

“So if the pen is mightier than the sword, does that make the book mightier than the gun?” Deacon asked idly as Valentine waved the others towards what he’d found. On the floor beneath a circular impact site was a small insect with some sort of hard shell crawling towards the books. The group stared. Dogmeat sniffed at it.

“A… bullet bug?” Hancock finally asked, confused. Unknown to any of them, he wasn’t far off.7 Valentine just shook his head.

“Y’know, it would have been nice if we could have read up on the sorts of weird stuff this place has,” Piper huffed, annoyed.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if someone wrote a book on it, but the only place you could find it is this library,” Valentine observed dryly.

Another insect hit the shelves next to them, this one putting a hole in Preston’s robe near his right arm. “I don’t really have a way of fighting back against bullet bugs and book guns,” the former Minuteman complained. “Maybe we should just get moving again, and quickly.”

As the next “ _crack!_ ” sounded, the group started running. The shelf they were next to ended into an intersection, and they followed the yarn into another aisle, one that seemed blessedly free of high-speed insect life.

The new aisle ended in an intersection that was a crossroads in more ways than one: another length of yarn, one the exact same color blue as the one they were following, crossed over theirs. “Could someone else be using another ball of yarn?”

“Could be,” replied Nick, although he sounded doubtful. “The way DiMA talks, it’s pretty common for students to get lost in this plac- what?” 

“Oh, god!” shouted Preston. Valentine had interrupted himself just before Preston’s shout, because he had already spotted what had probably caused the former Minuteman to cry out: on the floor, on a very large tray, laid out for serving and surrounded by wonderfully fragrant roast vegetables, was a skillfully prepared roast dog. Any Morporkian who knew anything about dog breeding would have guessed that it was one of the near Uberwaldian breeds.

To Valentine, it looked like a German Shepard. 

It was obvious Nick wasn’t the only one who had come to that realization, as several party members were looking frantically between Dogmeat and the dog that was meat. “Is that-” Piper began.

“I’ll be damned, it looks just like-” started Longfellow.

“Who’d even have the time to-” mused Hancock, perhaps overthinking the business thanks to his Mentats high.

“Mmm, anyone hungry?” Deacon asked, with just enough exaggerated cheerfulness to make it obvious to Valentine that he was disturbed.

“Deacon!” snapped Preston.

Deacon, however, was stepping forward to shoo the curious Dogmeat away from the roast dog. “It was a joke, boy, leave that alone.” Dogmeat licked his chops and whined, apparently the only one there not bothered by the idea of eating a roast him.

At the next intersection, a yarn of matching blue crossed _under_ the one they were following. After the unpleasant discovery at the previous one, the group approached this one cautiously, but at first nothing seemed out of place beyond the second yarn.

Preston looked down on it in confusion. “At the last intersection, the other one was on top. Now it’s on the bottom, like it’s been there longer. Does that mean _it’s_ the right one now? Maybe we should follow it?”

Deacon looked back and forth, checking where the second yarn was coming from and going to (not that there was a way to be sure which one was which), but then he stopped and stared at the side of a bookshelf that ran parallel to the crossed-thread. Deacon had a damned good poker face, aided, as it was, by his sunglasses, but now he paled and his expression turned just a little too stony, no hint of his usual joking demeanor. “No, I don’t think we should,” he said, and turned to continue following their original yarn.

Valentine looked at the shelf end that had caused that reaction, and saw, written in chalk, the Railsign for danger: an X in the center surrounded by eight radiating lines, only the line in the bottom right corner was unfinished. Above the chalk markings was a neat sign labeling the shelf as “Fiction”, and on the floor beneath was a piece of chalk.

“C’mon, let’s get moving,” he said to the others, and turned to follow Deacon.

As they walked, Hancock hurried to catch up with him. He glanced around, and then spoke quietly to Valentine. “Nick, wanted to check with another pair of eyes, and yours are as good as they get, but… I was pretty sure those marks weren’t there when we first got to that spot.”

Valentine shook his head. “No, they weren’t.”

Deacon stayed ahead of the rest of them, as though fleeing the danger markings behind them. He crouched a little lower than before, moved a little more silently. Somehow, despite this particular aisle being straight, Nick lost sight of him briefly. The second time it happened, Valentine hurried to catch up with the former spy, and so he ran right into Deacon when the other had stopped short, nearly knocking them both to the ground. It didn’t take long for Valentine to find what had given Deacon pause. “Oh, no,” he groaned sadly. 

Another intersection, another thread crossing on top of their yarn, and next to it, the dead body of Preston Garvey, a combat knife, the sort that could commonly be found in the Commonwealth, embedded in his back. Valentine looked back at the rest of the group, verifying that _their_ Preston was still hale and whole.

“Oh, god,” whispered Piper. 

“In the back, huh?” Longfellow observed. “Doesn’t look like he was expecting it.”

Preston, the living one, approached the body and crouched down next to it. He reached out a gloved hand towards the knife, then pulled it away.

“You don’t think… it couldn’t have been one of us, could it?” Piper asked.

Preston stood up. “If it was, it was probably something this place did to you. Them. I trust you guys. You wouldn’t do something like this if you were yourselves.”

Valentine caught an exasperated expression on Deacon’s face, but for once he kept his big mouth shut. Hancock, however, pointed out, “You just met me a few days ago.”

Preston grinned, turning towards Hancock and away from his own dead body. “Nick seems to like you, and Nick’s good people. That’s good enough for me.” 

Valentine suspected he’d be risking a blush, if he were capable of it.

Hancock grinned and shrugged. “Fair enough, brother. Besides, I usually go for the soft underbelly.”

Hancock’s response caused Preston’s grin to falter slightly, but when it faded fully it was because the former Minuteman had switched to professional mode. “Anyway, we should probably keep moving. If it was something about this place, we don’t want to give it time to work on us.”

The next aisle curved. It could possibly have even curved around enough to have caused one of the earlier intersections, but Valentine wasn’t certain, what with the library getting slightly non-Euclidean on the edges. This time, Preston took the lead, and Deacon had stopped trying to race ahead. Still, the pattern had established itself well enough that everyone started to slow down as the next break in the aisles became visible. This time, the other yarn seemed to cross both over and under their thread at the same time. This time, there were two bodies.

Old Longfellow crouched next to his own body. The dead man’s hair and beard had nearly fallen out, his body was covered in sores, and much of his old hunter’s coat and the shirt beneath it had been ripped off. “Radiation, looks like,” he observed calmly, though Valentine knew that radiation was the same foe that had taken Longfellow’s unborn child from him. He sighed and stood up. “Not how I’d want to go, but I been around long enough, can’t really complain about how I go out.”

Valentine didn’t point out that technically, Longfellow wasn’t even a year old. Even if he was prone to dwelling on that surreal tidbit, it didn’t seem the moment to bring it up.

Longfellow continued, looking over towards the other body, “Not like… whatever caused that,” he added sadly.

The other body appeared female. That and the clothes were the main reasons it could be identified as another Piper Wright, since the woman was otherwise aged beyond all recognition. Valentine began checking for cause of death, while the living, young Piper stood back and looked away, her hand covering her mouth in an attempt to maintain composure.

“Near as I can tell, she died of old age. Certainly no signs of violence or obvious illness,” Valentine explained.

“Do you think…” Piper started, but her voice shook on the last word. She stopped and began again. “Did something age… her, or do you think she was just… lost in here that long?”

Valentine shook his head. “Not really sure. Hell, for all I know, it could somehow be both.” He turned a sympathetic gaze towards the reporter. “Sticking around here doesn’t help her, or us. We should probably get moving again.”

They followed their yarn, and at the next intersection, the other yarn passed over theirs, then curled under it and went back in the same direction it came from. Valentine was still looking down at the crossover when he heard the burbling growl from the next aisle over and heard the sound of footsteps hit the floor.

It was Hancock, his perceptions still heightened by the Mentats he’d taken earlier, who turned on the rushing feral ghoul first, and it was Hancock’s dagger that tore first into the ghoul’s belly, then into his neck, before Valentine could call him to stop. The feral hit the ground at Hancock’s feet, and the former mayor took a breath to steady himself before kneeling down. He pushed aside the shredded frock-coat worn by the dead feral and touched the sash on the body, stripes so soiled their colors couldn’t be determined, and a ripped field of what could have once been any color, except that everyone there (except maybe Dogmeat) knew it had once been blue.

Hancock stood back up. “Funny. Wasn’t feeling particularly suicidal today.”

Old Longfellow handed the ghoul his flask. “Looks like you might need what’s left in here more than me.”

Hancock took it and threw back the remaining contents in one gulp. He handed the flask back to the old hunter. “Thanks again. That’s another I owe you.”

“Seems to me, if you’re covering me for that tour, we’re more than even, but I won’t turn down any other spirits you’re up to sharing,” answered Longfellow.

Hancock grinned. “You got it.” And then he walked on ahead, once more following the yarn.

At the next intersection, the alternate yarn thread seemed to pass directly through the one they were following. For some reason, one of Valentine’s subroutines suggested the term “clipping error” to describe it, but he didn’t bother to spare the processing power necessary to investigate why that term had come to mind. This was because he was too preoccupied by the body laid out before him.

This one was his.

His other self had been stripped of the dignity of clothing, but the facial features weren’t quite right for a standard generation two synth, while the body lacked the jury-rigged modifications of DiMA’s body, and that was before the pattern of synth-skin breakages was accounted for. Nick Valentine stood over his own dead body, and he observed how it had been methodically pulled apart piece by piece.

He was pretty certain his other self had been conscious for the whole thing. Certainly, the expression frozen into his visage suggested so.

Funny, how Ankh-Morpork had a way of throwing him into situations that made him long for the questionable release that vomiting can bring, but there it was.

Piper, who had been lagging somewhat behind the others, caught sight of what they were staring at. Her eyes opened wide in horror and she exclaimed, “Jinkies!” She clapped her hands over her mouth.

Everybody stared at her. It was certainly more pleasant than looking at the body. Hancock smirked slightly and raised the bit of muscle that marked where his right eyebrow would have once been, had that history ever been real. “Jinkies?”

Piper glared at him, irritated, and snapped, “That’s not what I was trying to say.”

Valentine grinned. The ridiculous non-swear hadn’t remotely fit the mood, but it was a mood that’d needed breaking, anyway. “That’s all right, Piper. I think we can all guess what you were going for.”

The group began moving once more. It was hard to tell who took the first step, and it didn’t matter - none of them wanted to linger. 

“That should be all of them. Us. Shouldn’t it?” Preston asked. “That accounts for everyone in here, right?”

Valentine hesitated a moment. It accounted for everyone in their group, sure, but they were down there for someone: the one laying out the yarn.

The group came to another intersection among the bookshelves. This time, there were no grisly surprises, no dead bodies. There was just the thread of yarn they’d been following, crossing the open space, with no hint of the second thread that had previously been passing over, under, and even through the one they’d been following.

Valentine sighed.

“ _That_ accounts for everyone,” he explained, and then walked on.

7 Unseen University is the home of many unique species that have evolved in the intensely magical environment created by a high concentration of grimoires, including the .303 bookworm, an insect that, to reduced the amount of time spent in any given magical book, evolved to eat through a book so quickly that they often exit the books at speeds faster than those of a speeding bullet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	6. End of You * Editing Rights * Zoinks!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [Blood Sugar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPGtOugQ69U&list=PLLEELrwJ-FypBYywOM81WCHmM4rOjKam0&index=11) by Pendulum and [Hook In Mouth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-XVbLmexU8&list=PLLEELrwJ-FypBYywOM81WCHmM4rOjKam0&index=12) by Megadeth. 
> 
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_End of You * Editing Rights * Zoinks!_

Deacon could hear voices up ahead - three that were maddeningly the same, and then DiMA. He held up a hand and then looked back at the rest of the group as he put a finger over his lips. Nick stilled immediately, and the rest stopped shortly thereafter. Deacon paused, and he listened.

“Reality is untidy. It must be edited. We have pruned one of the words that connotates ‘gritty realism’, and in doing this, we have limited the concepts available, and in doing so, we have diminished the concepts available to minds. Soon, other concepts will also cease to exist,” said a triplicate voice, so monotonous that it could have almost been one voice. It was eerie in its synchrony.

“How do you benefit from limiting the phase space set of conceptual realities?” asked a voice that Deacon knew to be DiMA’s.

“You will cease to be,” said a triplicate voice.

“I would prefer not to,” said DiMA, and his voice implied a mild frown.

“You are thinking small, in the sense of a personal ‘you’,” the triplicate continued.

“Can you know for certain that is what I meant?” said DiMA.

“We mean that the concept of ‘you’ will cease to exist. You as a personal entity will also cease to exist, but that is only a beneficial side-effect,” continued the triplicate.

“Hmm. I _do_ also object to the concept of ‘you’ ceasing to exist. I’m so glad we clarified that matter,” said DiMA, a bit of acid sarcasm shading ever so carefully into his voice.

“There will be no objections. There will be unity,” said the triplicate.

Deacon looked over to Nick, who was carrying DiMA’s staff as a part of his disguise, and he gave Nick a fractional nod before strolling out and announcing cheerily, “Sorry about that whole unity business, but I already bought the lifetime supply of chaos.”

Three empty grey hoods that were quite hard to see had DiMA held down to the floor. The synth was curled up, clutching a book as if his life depended on it. Nick threw DiMA’s staff at DiMA. It passed through one of the hovering grey hoods, apparently without disrupting it whatsoever. DiMA held up his hand and caught the staff without looking at it, the titanum staff clinking against his hand.

“You wouldn’t dare - not here, not with so much ambient magic -” one of the hoods said, in a calmer voice than the words deserved.

DiMA looked sidelong at the group, as if he were counting, and he stood, book in one hand and staff in the other, and he said softly, “Insofar as I have been threatened with nothing less than the dissolution of all personal identity - yes, _I_ will dare.”

He grabbed the yarn, which most of the group were holding, and yanked it tight up against Deacon.

In the distance, behind them the way that they had came, a treehouse appeared, as a spark ran up the yarn. The yarn seemed to collapse, and Deacon found himself summarily dumped on the floor of a treehouse. He could feel the sway of a tree. Sunlight filtered in through slats in the wood. In the distance, birds chirped. Deacon decided to stay on the floor on the treehouse and not look out any of the windows, but hey, Piper already had that covered for him, looking out a window and demanding, “DiMA, where _are_ we?”

“An extradimensional space,” DiMA replied, opening the book that he’d been clutching.

Piper sighed. “Thanks. That answers my question… not at all.”

“It’s just a rope trick,” DiMA said, shrugging. “Sometimes you need a little… space, away from everyone else.”

Anyone who had interacted with any of DiMA’s classmates for any amount of time knew how true that statement was. Sure, Deacon would just casually shred a treehouse into the fabric of reality, if he had to put up with Alf, Chatur, Zinon, and Xian.

* * *

Pondlife was a 16 year old student wizard. He’d been a 16 year old student wizard for many years now, though he didn’t know it. He’d gone into the library to look for books on foot-the-ball, or football, as it was rapidly coming to be called, and he’d gotten lost. Pondlife didn’t think he could have been gone more than a day or so, but he was famished, his stomach grumbling at him over his missed Somnambulistic Nibbles.

The most delightful scent hit his nostrils as he turned a corner and spied not only an intact string of yarn - score! He could use that to navigate back to the front desk! - but a full roast, just laid out on the floor where anyone could have it. Pondlife licked his lips and mumbled to himself, “There’s good eating on a dog.”

* * *

With the question of where they were out of the way and the immediate dangers apparently passed, the group in DiMA’s extra-dimensional treehouse started to relax. Deacon caught sight of the book in DiMA’s hand and stepped towards him, voice just a touch urgent. “So is that it?”

Valentine frowned and narrowed his optics suspiciously at Deacon. “Is that _what?_ ” he asked. During this whole business, Deacon seemed to have a clearer idea as to what was going on than he was saying, although "Deacon knows things he’s not telling" wasn’t exactly a stunning realization.

Deacon shrugged at Nick and gestured at the book. “Whatever we need to fix this,” he answered. 

It was a good attempt, and most of the others didn’t seem suspicious. DiMA, however, just gave Deacon a long, thoughtful, neutral look. “This is the Creator’s Dictionary,” he explained, turning to everyone else, “the source of all concepts and definitions that reality is capable of incorporating. It was by editing this book that the Auditors of Reality were able to censor the language available to express certain concepts, and therefore limit the available concepts themselves.”

Piper frowned and tilted her head. Her tone seemed doubtful. “They wanted to eliminate… what? Sex?” 

“Ultimately, they wanted to eliminate everything, but no, not sex, specifically,” DiMA answered. His tone was even and calm, but then, this wasn’t the first time reality had had a near-miss and DiMA had been stuck with the explanations, was it? He continued, “The word ‘fuck’ is used as more than just a verb; there are a whole range of expressions and emotions attached to it. Often, it is an intensifier. As it turns out, it even intensified existence.”

There was a moment of silence as DiMA’s words caught up with everyone.

“DiMA! Did you just say ‘fuck’?” Preston asked, shocked. Then he blinked in surprise. “Oh, hey, I can say ‘fuck’ now, too! God damn, that’s a relief.”

DiMA inclined his head in a brief nod. “I did mention that we’re in an extradimensional space. The restriction does not apply here.”

“Wait a second,” Hancock said, black eyes narrowed as he looked at the book in DiMA’s arms. “You’re telling me that the Creator’s Dictionary is in _English_?”

“No,” replied DiMA. “The Creator’s Dictionary is in Morporkian.” 

Before Valentine could point out that _that_ waspretty weird, too, Old Longfellow spoke up. “Hold on a minute, machine man,” he growled, and Valentine turned to glare at him. “You telling me that you had us gather up furniture from God only knows where - ”

“I thought it came from Deacon’s living room,” Piper interrupted.

Longfellow ignored her and repeated, “ - from god only knows where in order to test if we could swear proper outside of reality, when all you had to do is just zap us into a treehouse with a piece of yarn?”

For as hard as DiMA usually was to read, he actually looked embarrassed at the old hunter’s question, lowering his gaze to a corner of the room’s floor. “I… apologize for that. I sometimes struggle with an instinct to assign fetch quests, which I suspect is why it hadn’t occurred to me to test the censor field by using the rope trick.”

Deacon crossed his arms but didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The bastard was practically radiating the words, “I told you so.”

Valentine tried to get the group back on topic. “So if you’re saying that these… Auditors caused all of this by deleting the word from that dictionary,” he pointed at the book DiMA was holding, “I take it that all we have to do to set things right is put it back?”

“Yes,” DiMA replied, inclining his head once more. “However, we can’t do so yet. We lack editing rights to the Dictionary.”

“ _Fine,”_ Piper exclaimed, exasperated. “So what do we have to do to get editing rights? Make a pen from the quill of some legendary bird? Summon a dictionary spirit? Steal the boots from Truth while lies are running around the world?”

Several of the group stared at Piper for a moment. That was a… strangely specific suggestion she had just rattled off.

Piper cleared her throat and looked down. “Sorry, that’s, uh, from something the boss likes to say at the Times.”

DiMA knelt down, his movements careful, and began to draw a circle on the floor. “To gain editing rights, we need seven and one beings from a phase-space that already allowed the word to be gathered together in an extradimensional space. Each must provide a personal focus related to one of the concepts represented by the Dictionary’s addition. For most people on the Disc, meeting these criteria would be a challenging, possibly even impossible, task. However…” DiMA looked around at the others gathered in his extradimensional treehouse. “We’re already here.”

“Is it just me,” Preston started, looking at the others with a worried expression, “or does… editing rights to the dictionary of creation seem like an awful big responsibility to be handing to a group of ordinary people?”

Hancock shrugged. “Those ‘Auditors’ sure weren’t ordinary people, and it sounds like they were using it to unravel everything. Seems like us ‘ordinary people’ are being the responsib- wait.” He stopped mid-thought and looked at DiMA, who was still drawing on the floor. “Didn’t you call them ‘Auditors of _Reality_ ’ earlier?”

DiMA nodded. “I did.”

“Reality being… what they were trying to end, right?” asked Hancock.

“In a manner of speaking,” DiMA replied.

“No reality, nothing to audit,” said Hancock thoughtfully, arms crossed, as he seemed to put something together in his head. “So… this whole thing is happening because a bunch of ‘Auditors’ don’t feel like doing their fucking jobs?”

DiMA paused a moment to consider the question. “That… seems to be a roughly accurate description,” he admitted.

Hancock waved one of his hands absently in the air. “Right, then it’s obvious we’re _way_ more responsible than the last things who edited that book, and that’s not just the Mentats talking.” DiMA had finished the circle and was starting to stand up. Hancock nodded towards him. “So let’s get started, huh?”

“As I said,” DiMA began, “we should each provide a personal focus related to one of the concepts that the word represents.” He pulled a piece of paper from his robe. An iconograph, no, a game printout. Valentine could recognize the face of Faraday on it. DiMA looked down at the iconograph sadly for a moment, then crouched down to place it gently in the circle.

Preston looked around at the others and pulled a letter from… it was either his pocket or his inventory. He offered the rest of them an embarrassed smile and said, “I guess if it’s to... keep the concept of individuality existing, it’s not too much to ask for me to write another letter.”

Piper gasped and her expression brightened. She leaned eagerly towards Preston and asked, Who’s it for?”

Preston returned her eager smile with a shy one of his own. “I think I’d like to keep that to myself for now.”

Hancock casually pulled out a wallet, then removed from the wallet a wrapped Sonky. He smirked at the others and tossed the wrapped rubber into the circle.

Old Longfellow pulled out a flask, opened it up, and started to pour the contents into the circle. “Waste of good alcohol,” he muttered, “but… well, drink’s been my friend plenty of times when that word came into play.”

Hancock looked curiously at Old Longfellow’s flask. “I thought I finished that off.”

Longfellow grinned at the ghoul. “Had another.”

Valentine sighed. “If this business is gonna consume what we put in it, I’d really rather not use my wedding ring…”

“Don’t you have any handcuffs on you?” Deacon smirked at Valentine. 

“Deacon!” Preston chided.

Valentine glared at Deacon for just a moment, but then he sighed. He assumed Deacon was just guessing, or maybe even referencing his own wedding ‘gift’, but it was a valid suggestion. Valentine reached into a pocket, pulled out his pair of Commonwealth handcuffs, and tossed them on the floor. Then he glared again at Deacon, mentally daring the man to say something else. 

“Why, Nick, I had no idea!” Hancock exclaimed. 

“Hancock!” Valentine growled. Apparently he’d been glaring at the wrong person.

Piper looked around at the others and, embarrassed, pulled out an Ankh-Morpork paper dollar and placed it into the circle. That’s right, the group had spotted her and Sally at the Pink PussyCat Club on Valentine’s stag night…

Hancock looked for a moment like he was about to make a teasing remark about that dollar, when Piper pointed at him and demanded, “Don’t even start!”

Deacon intentionally slammed his toe against the floor and hissed in pain, shouting, “Fuck!” 

Preston frowned. “I thought it was supposed to be a focus.”

“I’m focused!” Deacon protested. “Besides, we don’t _just_ want it to be about sex, right? It’d be incomplete.” 

Huh. Valentine sort of wished he’d thought of that before the handcuffs.

Piper turned towards DiMA. “Okay, but what about Dogmeat? How do we get _him_ to-”

No one saw what Dogmeat did. Everyone was either watching Piper speak or looking to DiMA for a reply. Whatever he did, though, it seemed to work, as a magic surge burst out from the circle and washed the group in blackness. 

* * *

It wasn’t that Ponder was hiding from Mrs. Whitlow. 

Okay, so it was exactly that Ponder was hiding from Mrs. Whitlow.

They’d scattered. She couldn’t follow all of them at once, except for Ridcully, who’d nobly sacrificed himself to stay behind and eat the cheese board. Still, Ponder breathed a sigh of relief as the door of the High Energy Magic Building closed behind him. So she hadn’t followed him here.

“Zoinks! It’s Mr. Stibbons!” said Alf.

His students looked guilty. They probably were. Whatever it was, Ponder didn’t imagine it was relevant.

At the ‘zoinks’, Ponder delicately raised an eyebrow and jotted down some more notes on his clipboard. He announced, “Something is causing the natural censorship fields, which normally only affect the particularly virtuous and innocent, to expand and encompass even the more-stained. In addition, previously valid words are rapidly becoming off limits. I am, of course, unaffected, insofar as I can tell -”

“How would you tell the difference, sir?” Chatur asked innocently.

Ponder frowned and narrowed his eyes. “Just because I don’t want to conjure an imprecation doesn’t mean I _can’t_.” He could swear if he wanted to, he was sure. He just didn’t want to. The faces of his aunts floated before him, and the faint taste of soap burbled up in the back of his mouth. He just didn’t want to. That was it. “Now, have you noticed any difficulty with base utterments?”

“What, like calling Alf a low camel-stealing son of an unwed dog?” said Chatur, rather impishly.

“ _Tra'ka!_ ” Alf shot back.

“Oh, come on, you know I only say things like that to pull the other one on dumb foreigners,” said Chatur cheerily, daring Alf to prove his point.

Ponder went over his notes and mumbled to himself, “Tra’ka… that’s Dwarfish, right?”

Alf caught himself sheepishly. “Yeah, I wanted to say t-sser, but it wouldn’t come out. Wait. T-sser. T-sser?” Alf frowned and looked down at his hands, befuddled.

There was a moment. A pause. Everyone felt it.

Xian broke the silence with an irritated, “What’s the bloody problem?”

Ponder looked over at Hex, talking again mostly to himself, “There was just a magic surge, then, wasn’t there? You felt it. Hex, you recorded it, didn’t you?”

Hex’s last line of output, neat script about the nature of the Principles of Thaumic Propagation had veered off wildly with a _skritch-screech_ , and now scrawled untidily there was:

CHEESE OFF

Ponder put his hands on his hips. “There’s no need to be rude, Hex. Now, did we just miss a near world-ending event? Did it somehow fix itself without us?” He pulled a bit of gouda that he’d filched off the cheese board from his pocket, and he fed it to the mouse.

Hex wrote some more. 

Ponder looked over the output, and all he could say was, “Shoot.”

But that wasn’t a constraint of reality. That was just Ponder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	7. Extradimensional Fire * The Buffet * Story-time With the Husband

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [Welcome To Planet M.F.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8gHMU-pDbU&list=PLLEELrwJ-FypBYywOM81WCHmM4rOjKam0&index=13) by White Zombie and [Fuck This Shit I’m Out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FjWe31S_0g&list=PLLEELrwJ-FypBYywOM81WCHmM4rOjKam0&index=14). 
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic. Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

_Extradimensional Fire * The Buffet * Story-time With the Husband_

Magic surged around them and blew past them. The physical contents of the circle lit up in black flames that were only now starting to settle, with everything but the handcuffs settling into ashes. Hancock was no longer wearing his wizard robe, which the magic surge seemed to have somehow folded neatly in a corner of the room, stacked with the robes everyone else had been wearing. In fact, no one was wearing their wizard robes. This meant that DiMA no longer had any clothing on at all, not that he seemed to have much to hide. Everyone was in the process of checking themselves over. Hancock reached into a pocket and pulled out his box of Mentats, then snorted in amusement when he saw it. “Huh. Grape now,” he observed, holding the box up so the others could see. He then opened the box, popped one in his mouth, and returned the box to his pocket.

Piper was looking over her notebook, head tilted. “Looks like a story I had been working on finished itself?” She skimmed over it. “It seems _mostly_ accurate, except for the… flying cats?”

“Maybe there really were flying cats,” Deacon suggested. “You should leave it!”

“The only ‘flying cats’ I know of are called gryphons, and you’d know if there were any around here,” said Preston.

“I think they got one in the Palace menagerie,” Valentine said as he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He opened it and frowned when moths flew out from it. “Something about... it used to belong to the College of Heralds.”

“Oh, huh!” Preston responded. He patted himself over, then looked around at everyone else. “Well, doesn’t seem like anything _too_ bad happened, I guess.”

Valentine grumbled, “You’re not the one who needs to buy a new pack of smokes.”

Piper marked a few notes in her recently written article and asked, “So did we do it? Are things back to normal?”

“I believe it’s not so much that as we’ve created a new normal,” DiMA answered, gathering up the robes. “A less restrictive one.” He seemed to hesitate for a moment, then pulled his own robe on.

“Sure,” said Deacon, “but this normal should last longer.”

Valentine picked up his handcuffs from inside the circle. “Huh. Whatever it was turned ‘em black.”

DiMA looked up, then looked at the handcuffs, expression thoughtful. “Are they?”

“What, you blind now, machine man?” Old Longfellow demanded. “They’re black. Clear as day!” The old man seemed pleasant enough to hang with, but he sure did have a grudge against Nick’s brother, didn’t he?

DiMA just replied blandly, “As you say.”

Hancock frowned and looked at the handcuffs as well. They looked black to him, too, but DiMA sure did act like he was seeing something different, didn’t he?

“If that’s taken care of,” Preston said, “shouldn’t we be getting back?”

“Indeed,” replied DiMA. He started to lift one of his hands, then hesitated and lowered it, a slightly puzzled frown on his face. 

“What’s wrong?” asked Hancock, frowning as well. He started to look around the room for something out of place, and, thinking he might have seen something, approached one of the room’s corners.

“It seems the spell interfered with this space’s connection with the greater world,” DiMA said, tone calm but concerned. “While it will still return us to the Disc when I end it, I can’t be certain where or when we will end up.”

“Well, is there a way to find out?” asked Piper. 

Hancock crouched next to what looked like a crack in the floor. Then it widened, and he stood back up before turning to the others.

“Yes,” answered DiMA, “but-”

The strange crack made a noise like shattering wood, and Hancock stepped quickly away from it. He and the others turned to look at it. A light that didn’t seem quite right was starting to pour from it and spread across the floor in exactly the way light shouldn’t. “Y’know, we might just have to roll the dice and take our chances,” Hancock said.

* * *

The world went white. Then the white faded into a clean, well-maintained, and tastefully decorated room. A large, richly arrayed buffet table was laid out in the center of the room, and smaller round dining tables were scattered around it. Many of the smaller tables were occupied by people who were sitting and eating. There were a lot of people in the room. Most of the women were fancily dressed, although quite a few of them wore outfits that were scandalous by Ankh-Morpork’s standards. To be fair, Ankh-Morpork’s standards of dress deemed _pants_ on women scandalous (unless they were worn by women in the Watch or “barbarians”), but a lot of the outfits being worn in that room were a lot scantier than a pair of pants paired with a long coat. The men in the room were also well-dressed, although fewer of them were wearing anything that people would call “slightly obscene.” Fewer, but the number was not zero, Piper noticed as a rather well-muscled young man passed by their group, apparently paying no mind to the collection of synths, people, a dog, and a ghoul that had just appeared. 

Piper tore her eyes away from the young man and looked back at the others. “Err… where are we?”

Hancock glanced around the room with a broad grin. “Seamstresses’ Guild buffet,” he announced, tone entirely too cheerful. Oh, of course he’d recognize this place! Hancock continued, “Breakfast, judging from the selection. Pity.” His grin widened luridly. “Means we missed the best time to be here.”

Now that Hancock mentioned it, there was something about the place that made her think a bit about the Memory Den, even if the pleasures that Irma had sold were of a very different nature. Piper blushed and lifted a hand to partially hide her eyes, although as she did she noticed that Preston was blushing a bit as well. 

“Why if it isn’t Constable Valentine!” said an unfamiliar young woman who sauntered over to the group, a welcoming smile on her face. “Decided to take me up on my offer, after all?” Offer? But before Piper could say anything, the newcomer turned towards Hancock. “And if it isn’t John Hancock! A bit early for you, isn’t it?

Valentine gave the woman a friendly smile. “Flattered, as always, Pearlie, but this is all a bit of an accident.”

“Not that I’d mind taking advantage of any offer I’ve had the good fortune of being dropped into, darling.” Hancock sidled up towards the woman with a flirtatious smirk on his scarred lips.

Piper turned away to avoid watching all of that and just barely caught sight of Deacon slipping a sausage off the table and handing it to Dogmeat when he thought no one else was looking. Piper covered her mouth and held down a faint giggle. 

The woman, apparently a “Seamstress” named Pearlie, took Hancock’s arm and flirted back with him. “As it so happens, I just showed my last client out and have an opening in my schedule.”

Oh, god, Piper had to get out of there.

“Speaking of schedule, dear, you wouldn’t happen to know what day it is?” Hancock asked, still smiling. 

Oh, wait, that was useful information!

Pearlie laughed. “You really are something, Hancock! But yes, it’s Wednesday morning. April fourth, if you were needing that, too.”

Piper noticed that Pearlie didn’t bat an eyelash over the idea that Hancock might have completely lost track of what day or even week it was, but hey, that turned out handy. Iit had only been Tuesday when they had gone into the Library, which meant...

“You mean we could have wound up anywhere in time and space, and we just happen to end up in the Seamstresses’ Guild less than half a day later?” Preston’s tone was incredulous. 

“So it would appear,” DiMA replied, looking around the room with mild interest.

“Okay, but did it work?” Piper asked.

Pearlie frowned and looked around the group. “Did what work?”

“We restored ‘fuck’ to the world,” Deacon explained to Pearlie, tone completely serious. Not that that meant anything with him.

Pearlie raised an eyebrow. “Sweetie, that was never missing.”

* * *

Vimes sat in the extra chair in Valentine’s room, right next to Valentine’s desk. He was idly going through the various papers, reports, and newspaper clippings that his husband had on his desk. Vimes suspected that Valentine took a bit too much of his work home with him, but he wasn’t in much of a position to point that out. Besides, it was often pretty interesting rifling through what Valentine had on his desk, inferring the things and cases and events that Nick had been mentally gnawing away at, the connections he was making. Vimes wasn’t quite sure which was more fascinating: those times he discovered Valentine had, on his own, started drawing the very same connections that Vimes himself had, or those times when Valentine had started to see things that fit together that Vimes had completely missed. 

Valentine had been sitting at the desk’s chair talking to Vimes. Something about the Library and not being able to swear like they could in the Commonwealth and something? Unfortunately, Vimes had let himself get distracted by the way Valentine had gathered together a few newspaper reports about misplaced-and-later-found objects with an explosion that had happened near Ars Lane and Checkers Walk that turned out to have been feral swamp dragons, the poor buggers. 

Then Vimes heard the words, “Anyway, that’s when we parted ways. DiMA brought the dictionary back to the University with him, and I think Preston, Hancock, and Longfellow are planning on getting together for a tour of Bearhugger’s later…”

Vimes’s head snapped up in alarm. Bearhugger’s was right next to the Patrician’s Palace! “I’ll let the Broadway Watchhouse know they need to be on alert in that area.”

Valentine tilted his head and thought about it. Then he nodded. “Good idea. Preston’ll behave himself, but there’s only so far his influence will go with the other two.”

Vimes grunted and looked back down at the papers on Nick’s desk. “I still don’t understand why swearing was important enough that you lot needed to go exploring the library for it. You’re lucky you didn’t get catapulted farther in time than you did, or worse.” 

Valentine was silent for a moment, eyes narrowed as if he was thinking carefully about what Vimes had just said. Finally, he said, “Well, I couldn’t just leave my brother in there, could I? Besides, Sam, like I said, we were losing words! Turns out it was some sort of… mystic plot to dissolve reality by dissolving the ability to express it or some such nonsense like that.”

Vimes sighed. He leaned back in his seat and rubbed his temples. “I’m sorry, Nick. If you say it was necessary, I believe you. I trust your judgement. Gods know, we’ve had stranger things go wrong in this city. But I still don’t get what the fuck you’re even talking about.”

Valentine looked surprised for a moment, then he smirked. “Well, I guess you don’t have to ‘get’ it, but thanks for believing in me, doll.” Valentine leaned forward and kissed his husband on the cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> S: The next/final chapter is actually a couple of quick epilogues. That way we don’t actually have eight chapters but rather seven chapters + epilogues, or 7+1. Get it? _Get it?_
> 
> >_>
> 
>  **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


	8. Epilogues

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter songs: [Placebo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypw53cMv8xo&list=PLLEELrwJ-FypBYywOM81WCHmM4rOjKam0&index=15) by Meat Beat Manifesto and [Hey Tomorrow Fuck You And Your Friend Yesterday](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-D7N0peNuc&list=PLLEELrwJ-FypBYywOM81WCHmM4rOjKam0&index=16) by Mindless Self Indulgence. 
> 
> **We’ve created a Discord server for chatting about Discworld, Fallout, or this fic. Feel free to join us at<https://discord.gg/6QM4Egy>**

**Epilogue 1: Canary**

Deacon wandered casually hubward along Quarry Lane, a troll-heavy8 part of town, after having spent some time lurking around the Cattlemarket. Even now, there were still a lot of golems owned by some of the merchants and butchers of the city, and Deacon’d been trying to get a feel for which ones would be most willing to sell soon.

Going unnoticed had gotten harder than it had been while reality was unraveling, though maybe a little easier than it had before. Of course, he’d always had a talent for that. Sometimes, when he really wanted to make sure, he’d even remove his shades. After all, the glasses were really just another disguise, the disguise that let people see Deacon.

He was approaching Clay Lane when he heard a familiar voice call to him. He grinned as the other approached. “Hey, Nick.” He glanced at the uniform. “Keeping us all safe from the city’s varied miscreants?”

“Just the actual criminal ones,” Valentine grumbled. “Anyway, I just got off and was on my way home when I spotted you, figured I’d check up on you.”

Deacon quickly hid his genuine smile behind an amused smirk. For once it was actually a bit of a relief to be noticed, since he wasn’t actively trying to avoid it. “Aw, that’s sweet, detective! I appreciate your concern, but I’m _pretty_ sure I can find my way back to the Trust on my own.”

Nick rolled his optics and muttered, “Wise-ass. But seriously… can’t quite put my finger on it, but something seemed… off about you when that whole word business was going on.” Then he narrowed his optics suspiciously. “That’s not even counting how, once I put together the way you’d been acting, I realized you sure did seem to know a lot more of what was going on than you were saying.”

“Me?” Deacon asked with exaggerated innocence. “Aw, come on now, Nick, don’t you think I’d just come out and say it if I thought reality was unraveling because none of us could say one specific curse word?”

Nick hesitated, then studied Deacon, realization dawning on his expression. “Not if you didn’t figure the rest of us would believe you.” He shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong, I know I can rely on you when the chips are down, so I figure if you’re trying that hard to get us to do something, it’s probably best to go along with it, no matter how cockamamie the explanation. But even for this place, an explanation like that is…”

“...Almost as ridiculous as finding out that you’re a fictional character and the whole world’s a computer simulation?” Deacon finished, grinning.

“Hah! Yeah, something like that,” Valentine admitted.

Deacon sobered. “You know those stories about how before the war… the fictional one that didn’t happen, not all the real ones that this world has managed… how they’d use canaries in mines to make sure the air hadn’t gone bad or something?” He sighed. “I guess I was the canary, Nick. Between having once been fictional and having no history to speak of, I’m just… just a little less real than everyone else, and so it was hitting me first and hardest.” 

“Which meant the rest of us wouldn’t have been far behind,” Valentine answered thoughtfully. 

“Yeah,” Deacon admitted. “But from the sound of things, eventually it would have been _everybody_. And from what your brother said, we were probably the only ones who could fix things, so if we had unraveled…” he shrugged, then added brightly, “Good thing that never happened!” He thought, briefly, about that other branch of yarn, that Deacon who left the danger marking outside the fiction aisle. Was he still there, a story among the stories? Did it even matter if it wasn’t real? 

He pushed the thought aside. 

“Anyway, we still on for the game next week?” Deacon asked. “Since your _husband_ isn’t taking you on a honeymoon or anything.”

“Hey!” protested Valentine. “It’s not _just_ him. Sure, it was his idea, but I agreed with it.”

Deacon rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine, since you’re _both_ a couple of workaholi-” he paused a moment, spotting someone in orange sweeping the road a couple of buildings along Clay Lane. A cart went rumbling past, and the figure was gone.

Valentine frowned and searched in the direction Deacon had been looking. “Something wrong?”

Deacon shook his head. “Thought I saw someone I recognized for a moment, but it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. Wasn’t real at all.”

8 Pun absolutely intended.

* * *

**Epilogue 2: Change History**

Marco Soto, fighting Monk of the Order of Wen and one of their regular agents in Ankh-Morpork, looked over Qu’s smaller, portable Procrastinators in the small outpost monastery on Clay Lane, accessible through Soon Shine Sun’s shop. “They… do seem to be moving more smoothly,” he admitted finally, defeated.

Lu-Tze seemed slightly… smug, to put it bluntly. “We’re lucky to have caught it in time. The unravelling has been going on for a long time, and most of the effects have been… subtle. People acting in ways they mightn’t otherwise, some effects having outsized consequences while others having none at all… Think, for example, of how bad the ripples were when the Aching witch had kissed the Wintersmith, then compare with how mild the consequences were when the Lancre witches moved their entire kingdom through a decade and a half.”

Marco Soto stared at Lu-Tze, bug-eyed. “Mild?! We were working overtime to balance that nonsense out! Just because _they_ didn’t deal with the consequences didn’t mean they weren’t there!” He crossed his arms and humphed. “And here I had always thought witches were supposed to be the _sensible_ magic users.”

Lu-Tze waved his hand absently. “A few sleepless nights on our part is very little compared with the number of old ladies killed as ‘witches’ in the paranoia kicked up by the Cunning Man.”

Marco Soto looked thoughtful for a moment. “So these ‘subtle effects’ of the unravelling… that wouldn’t happen to include the Sto-Lat Plains’ rather sudden obsession with steam rail, would it?”

“What?! Of course not! It’s obviously just steam time!” protested Lu-Tze.

“Mmm-hmm,” Marco murmured in reply, eyes still narrowed. “So… you’ve always always been old friends with Munstrum Ridcully? Scampering off to the University to dump all our gossip on the Archchancellor wouldn’t be a new thing, would it?”

Lu-Tze blinked and stared at Marco. “Yes, I’ve always always been old friends with Ridcully. Are you suggesting that _I’ve_ been impacted by the unravelling?”

Marco gave Lu-Tze a very faint smile. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” He looked back over the grinders. “Certainly, you’ve always been the most prone to involving outsiders with our business,” he added, tone faintly disapproving.

“Those outsiders were a stroke of serendipity,” Lu-Tze argued. “The right qualities to address the problem, with the right histories to notice the most obvious side-effect, showing up just as the matter was reaching a critical point?”

“Perhaps,” Marco conceded. “I’m still not entirely comfortable that we had to trust them with something of this magnitude. Have you made certain there’s no way for them to trace us back?

“There are no certainties in this world, not with the element of surprise, but I think we’ll be safe for awhile yet,” replied Lu-Tze, his tone suggesting that he was sharing an inside joke with himself.

“And now they all know about the Creator’s Dictionary. And how to edit it,” cautioned Marco.

“It’s not the first time the Dictionary has changed,” reminded Lu-Tze. “Remember when gnomes, pixies, and goblins were all the same thing in different circumstances?9 Most don’t, of course. Once the language has changed, it’s hard to imagine it’s ever been any different.

“Still, we should look into locking out those editing rights,” Marco suggested. “Something like that’s too powerful to risk falling into the wrong hands.”

“Some times, after a Creator’s finished with a world, another Creator will come and add to it,” Lu-Tze argued, shaking his head. “Think of Fourecks. The Disc is richer for having it. A world is often richer when later Creators come to make their own additions once the original Creator has left. Narratives may run in paths, but contain them too much, they stagnate and cease to run at all. Locking down the Creator’s Dictionary is as certain to lead to the unraveling as the Auditor’s plans. What lives, changes, even once the Creator has gone.” 

9 “Gnomes, goblins (and pictsies) A more or less interchangeable term (a gnome is merely a goblin found underground, a goblin is merely a gnome coming up for air, a pictsie is a gnome fighting) for the Discworld’s smallest (4" to 2') humanoid species. Seldom encountered, not because of their rarity but because of their speed and natural desire to keep out of the way of creatures to whom they would merely be something sticky on the sole of the boot – although a well-trained gnome, with that strength so often found in small creatures, can in fact lift a human being. They are generally hunters and gatherers, usually of property belonging to someone else.” - Turtle Recall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter 14](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24868351/chapters/62674879) of Welcome Home now has art by [allislaughter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allislaughter), of the [Rigged Games](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1687249) series ([@glitchvault74](https://glitchvault74.tumblr.com/) over at tumblr. Check out the art, then go and give the artist some love!
> 
> That’s it for this fic, but we’ve got another one starting next weekend.
> 
>  **We love comments of all lengths, and understand the need for low-energy commenting like kudos. If you ever find yourself wanting to give us additional kudos, feel free to leave a comment of an icon or emoji of a heart!** <3


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